Onomakoen I arrived at 9:37 in the morning. Through the windows of the train, you could see the snow falling horizontally. All was white around the village. The snow had covered everything and the cold had seeped everywhere. It was seven degrees below zero. Too few degrees to allow me to go out without the paraphernalia of the mountaineer. All passengers of the train looked like astronauts. It was almost as if we were on another planet. The sun was high and cold. The sky was as blue and icy.
Onomakoen is a tiny town near Hakodate. Both cities are on the island of Hokkaido (北海道), located in northern Japan. This is clearly the coolest island the country. I had gotten for Christmas holidays. I needed to escape Tokyo, its great metropolis, its social life and its problems. I needed to lose a little further north. And I found myself Onomakoen.
It happened that day, a Friday. Onomakoen is a very small village. In winter, we no longer see the road, the houses are covered with snow, there is more sidewalks and people do not leave home. I walked out of the station, to the lakes. Three charming small lakes, connected by wooden bridges are one of the local attractions. On the road ahead was difficult. It was so cold that my face seemed to fall. I had the impression of having ears and my nose was not breathing the same air. I was disfigured, and my feet sank wearily into the snow.
Once the lakes, I felt my face quickly recompose. The lakes were indeed present, beautiful, calm and frozen. The uniform white coat covered the banks and the trees, the water remaining black and without any movement. Not a leaf on the trees, too dark glow to the table all white. The sky was terribly cloudy. Everything was quiet. I then advanced and I crossed the first bridge to get lost in the forest.
Getting lost in the forest was really difficult. In Japan, the unknown is often known, and soon finds himself marked. Even with five feet of snow, the signs point the way. Taken by the contemplation of the place, I still found a way to depart the shores inadvertently, to deeper into the forest. The cold does not bother me anymore. But after a while the vision was becoming increasingly difficult. I was lost in the blizzard. My walk became moot. I decided then to go to escape the cold. It was at that moment that I saw. A young woman, tall, thin, wearing a long white dress. Bare shoulders, she did not seem cold. She looked into my eyes, then turned to plunge into the forest. I called several times but it did not stop and disappeared.
I did not know who she was. I just saw his face. This conundrum persisted in my mind until I arrived at the station. My walk was too long and I was surprised to discover that I had missed the last train of the day. I was forced to stay Onomakoen. It does not take long for me to find a hostel. Located in a small cozy room, I looked out the window at the spectacle of white out. Who was this woman? Why does she not die of cold and lost in the snow? I did not want to be alone in this room, so I went downstairs to the dining room for dinner. A young woman was playing and singing Shamizen. Rocked by the strange sounds that I could have used to hear, I watched the young woman asleep in one eye. Outside it was snowing.
It was snowing again, and the wind froze me petrified face. In large dark streets of the city, I try to follow the footprints in the snow. I do not know where I am or where I go. I'm just the footprints in the snow until you reach an impasse. There on the floor of small scarlet drops on the white carpet. After I wake up.
I awoke. There were close to me the body of the female Shamizen asleep. She showed me her back, lying on its side. There was a smell in the room of the body. At the window, snow fell on the morning we took out the shovels to clear snow. The sky was white. Some traces of fog too. Mist on my glasses when the musician gave me a curious look last night. It was then seated near the fireplace. She spoke Japanese. I also, finally evil, but enough to convey the ambiguity that gradually awakened in me. What a strange face, his eyes so fine, discreet mouth, a smile that is not one, but that does not refuse either. I did not know very well how we had to come up to my room, or how I slowly remove her clothes. His kisses were different from those that had been given up when, after nearly 45 years of wandering. We quickly rolled overboard. After waking, I felt this strange feeling, waking up the next the person with whom you had sex a few hours before. It was like an in-between, between the impression of knowing the deepest but on the other side, a distance characteristic of the human soul, we can not really fully grasp. As if something was missing. Then gently kissed her shoulder.
The room was empty again, full of my presence alone. I drank coffee at the window when I began to think again. The lady of the forest. What had become of her? Maybe I should see her again if I went there again. Then I began thinking about all his stories of goddesses and witches, Odysseus who was carried away by the horns: a small laugh escaped my mouth. I finished my coffee, my camera, took my coat and went outside.
The weather was not favorable, but not hostile. Midwater. Then I went to the same place as last time. It was four o'clock, the night was falling, but the reflection of distant city lights on the white snow I could still see clearly. As I expected, the young woman was there again. Always expressionless, right shoulder while she was naked in a frigid climate, she placed her big eyes on me austere. Typically, before such person was scared and fled. But we are in life to be afraid, life is both frightening than attractive. So I stood before her, and I went slowly to be sure I see every contour of his face.
near me I was beautiful, she did not flinch. She stood barefoot in the snow, leaves open the hair, skin as white as blue in this paradise frozen. Near her, I was surprised by the scarlet drops in the snow all around her dress. I looked down and saw a big red hole in his throat. Took fright, I drew back, blankly. I decided to go hostel without looking back. The young woman did not follow me.
is said that the day of her wedding, a bride discovered that her husband had run away without explanation. Mad with grief, she went to commit suicide in the forest Onomakoen. It was found that traces of blood but no body. It was 20 years ago. The player
Shamizen taught me some songs. We sang in bed together. It still reaches a kind of intimacy with each other that we can even sing with her. This gives a sense of closeness, a mysterious rejuvenation around the message rather direct intercourse. As we sang, she looked into my eyes. Though I know it recently, I could not help but feel good about it. But something was missing. While I was singing softly, she passed her hands through my hair. Then gently, she kissed me and slipped his hand up my back. Then slowly I passed my hand over her firm breasts and soft as snow. She took me gently by the hair and took me down. We had stopped singing, having opted for a more direct message. So little afterwards, I went and I left the player Shamizen and I did not know exactly where I was.
Always the same dream in a city, it's dark and I am the footprints in the snow to reach the drops of blood. This same dream, finally, is as strange as it starts to become reality this dream. As if my dream became a reality. As if my reality was becoming a tale, whose meshes are formed by the dream. Disentangling fact from fiction. The train spirit to fly, the snow too. Snow returns to heaven. There are more clouds. And when we look in the lake: "There's something missing." I kissed him
gently on the shoulder. My mistress had a taste of snow. She turned with eyes full of tears. "Because you're going!" she told me. So I kissed her, and all the wooden walls around me turned into stone. When I kissed her, I saw her face open like a cloudless sky, blue and orange rain falling its dry hair and money. I kissed her, as if not it goes away, as if to prevent it from starting when she was gone, orange color, like the violin that grew slowly in my hands. I spent the archer on his cheeks quivering ... Why? Why ... Water flows from the apartment when it is snowing outside? He reigned in the room smelling corpse. So I kissed him again, but my lover turned into puddle and slipped between my fingers, leaving as attendance sheets wet salt to taste.
"There's something missing." I went back to the snow woman, because I knew she would be there. The leaves were falling like autumn on the white snow turned red. I approached the young woman ... there was nothing more to say ... It was a bit like there's no history. The beautiful woman in the forest, the ghost of my own wanderings past entanglement that can not get out "of the misery in which I am." We plunge into the snow as it plunges into the void. We can talk of blood on the snow, the beauty of scarlet on the background white. There is something missing in this story is missing something.
I both feet in the snow to go back to the lady of the snow. She was gone. She will not return. She had probably never existed elsewhere. All this is just fiction, like the walls of this chamber who have flown at the same time in the dark like this woman who has broken water in the middle of my lonely bed. The snow reflected the red lights of emergency beacons. But here, the path was more marked. All this is false, everything is broken, all is lost in the literary device of snow environments. Moreover, Onomakoen was not really a winter landscape. It was in midsummer. I did not have 45 years. Shamizen And the player was not really Japanese.
I had only one solution. Walking on the small wooden bridge, which separated two small islands, I leaned over the fence to gaze at the frozen lake winter. I then climbed over the fence and jumped into the water. The ice broke my fall. The lake was deep. In the water I turned to see the light of the moon through the hole left by my body. I let myself sink to the bottom, leaving the cold finally petrify every part of my body, my skin becomes very blue. Nothing doing yet, nothing to do. Something was missing.
He began to snow.
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