Mr Fujimoto trailed his fingers through the air. ”Why do things happen the way they do? Since the gas attack on the subway, watching those pictures on TV, watching the police investigate like a crack squad of blind tortoises, I’ve been trying to understand . . . Why do things happen at all? What is it that stops the world simply . . . seizing up?”
I’m never sure whether Mr. Fujimoto’s questions are questions.” .. “Do you know?”
He shrugged. ”I don’t know the answer, no. Sometimes I think it’s the only question, and that all other questions ar tributaries that flow into it.” He ran his hand through his thinning hair. ”Might the answer be ‘love’?”
I tried to thin, but I kept seeing pictures. I imagined my father–that man who I had imagined was my father–looking out through the rear window of a car. I thought of butterfly knives, and a time once three or four years ago when I was alking out of McDonald’s and a businessman slammed down onto the pavement from a ninth floor window of the same building. He lay three meters away from where I stood. His mouth was gaping open in astonishment. A dark stain was trickling from it, over the pavement, between the bits of broken teeth and glasses.
. . . “I’d rather be too young to have that kind of wisdom.”
Mr. Fujimoto’s face turned into a smile that hid his eyes. ”How wise of you.”
Is that wonderful prose, or what?