A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki Read Free Book Online Page A

herself to read further and more quickly, but if it felt
like the pace of the writing was slowing down, then she would slow her reading down, too, or stop altogether. This way she wouldn’t end up with an overly compressed or accelerated sense of
the girl’s life and its unfolding, nor would she run the risk of wasting too much time. She would be able to balance her reading of the diary with all the work she still needed to do on her
own memoir.
    It seemed like a very reasonable plan. Satisfied, Ruth groped for the book on the night table and slipped it under her pillow. The girl was right, she thought as she drifted off to sleep. It was
real and totally personal.
    6.
    That night she dreamed about a nun.
    The dream took place on a mountainside, somewhere in Japan, where the shrill cries of insects broke the silence, and the nighttime breezes in the tall cypress trees were fresh and restless.
    Amid the trees, the graceful curve of a tiled temple roof gleamed dully in the moonlight, and even though it was dark, Ruth could see that the building was falling down and close to ruin. The
only illumination inside the temple came from a single room adjoining the garden, where the old nun knelt on the floor in front of a low table, leaning in toward a glowing computer screen, which
seemed to float in the darkness, casting its silver square of light onto the ancient planes of her face. The rest of her body receded into the darkness of the room, but Ruth could see that her back
was curved like a question mark as she bent toward the screen, and that her faded black robes were old and worn. A square of patchwork fabric hung around her neck, like the bib an infant might wear
to protect it from spills. Outside in the temple garden, the moon shone through the sliding doors that opened onto the veranda. The curve of the nun’s shaved head gleamed faintly in the
moonlight, and when she turned her face, Ruth could see the light from the monitor reflected in the lenses of the glasses she was wearing, which had thick, squarish black frames, not unlike
Ruth’s own. The nun’s face looked oddly young in the pixelated glow. She was typing something, carefully, with arthritic forefingers.
    “
S o m e t i m e s u p . . .
” she typed. Her wrists were bent like broken branches, and her fingers curled like crooked sticks, tapping out each letter on the
keyboard.
    “
S o m e t i m e s d o w n . . .
”
    It was the answer to Nao’s elevator question. She hit RETURN and sat back on her heels, closing her eyes as though dozing. After a few minutes, a little icon on the
side of the screen flashed and a digitized bell sounded an alert. She sat up, adjusted her glasses, and leaned forward to read. Then she began to type her reply.
    Up down, same thing. And also different, too.
    She entered her text and sat back again to wait. When the bell sounded, she read the incoming message and nodded. She thought for a moment, running her hand over her smooth head, and then she
started typing again.
    When up looks up, up is down.
    When down looks down, down is up.
    Not-one, not-two. Not same. Not different.
    Now do you see?
    It took her a while to type all this, and at last when she hit ENTER to send her message, she looked tired. She took off her glasses, placing them on the edge of the low
table, and rubbed her eyes with her crooked fingers. Putting her glasses back on, she slowly uncurled her body and stood, taking her time. When her feet were steady underneath her, she shuffled
across the room toward the sliding paper doors and the wooden veranda. Her white socks glowed brightly against the dark luster of the wood that many feet, many socks, had polished until it gleamed
in the moonlight. She stood on the edge and looked out at the garden, where old rocks cast long shadows and the bamboo whispered. The smell of wet moss mixed with the scent of incense burned
earlier in the day. She took a deep breath, and then another, and raised her arms out