1. The letter

T.G. Watanabe in Paris

Paris, 2123

1. The letter

Takumi Goro Watanabe only called himself “T. G. Watanabe«. He found that more practical. When he was alone with himself, which he was ninety percent of the day, he called himself "Watanabe." He would also talk to himself and say: "Watanabe is having breakfast," or "Watanabe is making himself a nice jasmine tea." It was as if simply saying the activities gave them more value and made Watanabe more alive. But sometimes the words fell unheard and not even he noticed them.

It was in the year 2123 when Watanabe said "Watanabe doesn't watch the news anymore." Because he had enough of it. He even got rid of the huge television that took up half a wall and had cost him a fortune. He gave it to the neighbor, who couldn't contain herself because she was so happy. It wasn't an easy task to lug the device from its loft to her apartment downstairs, but Watanabe knew the right people to do it.

After they left, his neighbor stood in front of him in the hallway. As he had feared, she gave him her raisin cake, which she had praised but which he loathed, which he shortly afterwards fed to the other neighbor's cat and which she in turn vomited on Monsieur Principal's balcony one floor below. That's what cats did in Paris. And that's what you had to do with Madame de la Gorge's raisin cake.

The raisins in it were so thick and hard that T. G. Watanabe always feared that Madame de la Gorge would peel the cockroaches off the walls in the cellar, chop them up and dry them, and then fold them into the dough with a skillful swing of a spoon. Or the cake was from when her husband was still alive. Watanabe didn't know and he didn't want to find out either.

He called her “Madame de la Gorge” because he had forgotten her real name. Whenever she stood in front of him again with cake or questions, he just smiled, acted like a Japanese who had just fled the war and bowed to her, even though he hadn't actually done that for years.

Watanabe looked out at the cathedral and sighed. Then he left Notre Dame and his kitchen. He entered his high, uncomfortable concrete and glass living room, no different from a sterile office or a hotel lobby. There were two black leather couches, a large desk in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, and to the right a small, fully stocked bar with two bright red bar stools in front of it. Watanabe's desk was state-of-the-art, equipped with even more advanced technological advances that could extend on command like the limb of a reptilian alien. In short: Watanabe's living room would have been a perfect workspace for a stockbroker or it could have served as the backdrop for a crime thriller in which the rich businessman was murdered right at the beginning. Watanabe sat down on his black leather sofa and waited for the murderer.

He looked at the empty wall. It felt good to stop watching the news. And yet he had received one, a letter that was waiting for him in the kitchen.

After counting his neighbor's steps, he stood up again. Madame de la Gorge was wearing high heels again today, even though he had repeatedly asked her not to. Watanabe shook his head and went back into the kitchen. There he looked at the letter as if it could get legs or bite him. But he didn't move. It just lay there, wanting to be read or not. No, he didn't want anything. After all, he was just a piece of paper from a very distant world. It wasn't Japanese paper, even though the letter came from Japan. That means: It probably wasn't Japanese paper. Watanabe examined it. He picked up the letter and held it up to the ceiling light, but couldn't see anything special. Just his own address, written in old-fashioned cursive.

Who else wrote letters in the year 2123? It was almost as if he had received an antique gift. It also said “Watanabe” at the top left. His father wrote this letter. Was he still alive? Or whether it was one of his last acts to write this letter? Whatever it contained, it couldn't be anything valuable because his father would have sent it via security mail to Watanabe's office. But he had sent it to his home address, and that was strange because it wasn't easy to find out T. G. Watanabe's home address, he had made sure of that. So how did his father find out the address? Had he bribed someone? Put a detective on him?

Even the house number of the loft was correct. And he had his name spelled out. Nobody did that here, they all abbreviated it here. He had let him write, T. G. Watanabe now thought. His father knew hiragana and katakana, as well as kanji, but not characters that were formed using the Roman alphabet.

“To Takumi Goro Watanabe”. Back then he always pronounced both names “Takumi” and “Goro”. When he was ten years old, his father had explained to him that "Takumi" meant carpenter and "Goro" meant fifth son. Since Takumi Goro Watanabe was neither a craftsman nor a fifth son, the name had no meaning for him. He would have preferred to have been called "Paul Schmidt" or "Peter Berg" or had another European or American name.

He stood in front of the letter. He called out to him to sit down. He should read it. In order. “What do you want?” Watanabe grumbled. What else could his father say to him after all this time? Why had he written him a letter? Watanabe hesitated to open the letter, afraid that tearing open the envelope would open old wounds. He feared that this letter would not tell him anything new or that it would tell him something that could change his life in one fell swoop.

He wondered if that would be bad. His own company ran better without him. He hated most people, people at all. And he vegetated here, just like Madame de la Gorge's shaggy tomcat. Food was also brought to him. Only no one petted him.

Now he took a deep breath and pushed the kitchen knife under the right flap. He cut carefully, as if he were performing a dangerous operation. Then he excitedly pulled out a yellowed sheet of paper and a small flat data stick. The letter was written in a scraggly handwriting. Watanabe began reading.

Continuation

written on January 18, 2024

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