I suppose the expectation from a complex story that seems to be on the cusp of an untimely end is tumult and incoherence, but what struck me most about this chapter (once I was done guffawing at how Kashiwai on page 8 is essentially identical to the crying Aya Asagiri meme) was how profoundly peaceful it felt? Not the peace that comes in life unhindered, sheltered from the eddies of insecurity, but the release that accompanies the rush of tears, that breaking, cresting sigh of pain unknotted, the craggy dignity of heartfelt sobs, of collapse most momentous and liberating- such is the tragedy that graces Kashiwai, blinding her so she may see, letting her pour her heart out a cold and uncaring world so it might be purged of yearning's occlusion, and beat clear and steady again. How poignant those pages that trail her staggering down the long way to an unfamiliar home, that perch her on balconies in flightless reflection, that coil her in long shadows on yesteryear-creased sheets, heavy in the lightness of separation, sliced from herself by double-edged silence, and yet so very striking in her loss-won wisdom, in the set of her eyes that range across futures past and presents unreceived. There is no avalanche of events here, no smuggling of contrivances across this penultimate pass, but only the whispers of the city and the echoes of recollection, the sound of clacking heels and crowing phones at the salon, and the deafening hush of rain washing mistakes up and away. Perhaps they shall arrive at our next meeting, pile thick at farewell's site, but for now, moments are cheaper than promises and swifter than trains, passing us leagues in foggy omission, seams to be plastered with phantom what-ifs.
And the final pages are all the more striking for it, the closing of the circle once more, the quietude of glacial grieving rammed perilously by the face that sailed a thousand ships, battering Kashiwai and Tsuzuki both with an old, rapturous pain, the devilry of their wordless deal. In some sense, I feel the tale's ended already, and the final chapter shall prove not so much a continuation or an epilogue or a footnote as it shall a misty parallel, a speculation as authentic in its ghostliness as the delusions of those drifting far out at sea. It may not or perhaps cannot provide the perfect closure, if such a thing exists, if there even was an opening in the first place, for this is in so many ways a tale of the irresolute and labyrinthine present, where moments are strung as pearls in a necklace, each with their watery history and yet no order of organization, nested as they are upon a breathing throat. Fitting then, to end uncertainly and haphazardly, apocalyptically and anticlimactically, or not all at the close of it all- do tales end at weddings? At elopements? At gatecrashings? At annulments? Something shall always stretch on, for all staging is a vignette, and the grandest of stages cast themselves beyond curtains to live on in the spotlight of the mind's eye, endlessly improvised in an ardent viewer's heart. So it goes with Iberis, a tale I'll fondly remember regardless of how it ends- a strange declaration to make before the conclusion, and yet one that cannot be made any later, dedicated as it is to a tale out of its time, and yet so perfectly in its place.
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