Memoirs of a Shattered Soul — 15: The Ice Palace
I spent today in the Jungfraujoch Ice Palace with my father, talking about dreams of snowstorms and memories of my childhood. And speculating, there among the ice sculptures, of what my future may be.
August 20, 2013
Today is my father’s birthday. For this reason he cancelled all of his work activities for the day and invited me out to the Jungfraujoch Ice Palace. We took a train from Lauterbrunnen to Kleine Scheidegg, then switched to another railway line that went up to the Top of Europe, the highest point you can travel to by train in the Swiss Alps. There’s a pretty view of the Aetsch Glacier from there.
The Ice Palace is like a hidden treasure up on the mountaintop— or even like a little secret doorway into fairyland. Walking inside after a gondola ride that gives you a bird’s eye view of the alpine landscape, you can explore the polished icy halls and find lifelike ice sculptures in nearly every corner. I saw dancing penguins and a family of bears that were so realistic I could have believed they had been transformed into ice by Yuki-onna, the frost spirit from Japanese folklore.
I told my father, “I feel as though I’m walking in a dream. A lot like the dream I was telling you about a few months ago, actually, where I saw your video game characters Hoshi and Jo battling in a snowstorm. There was a castle in my dream too.”
“A castle?” my father repeated. He seemed just a bit distracted.
“Well, it was Himeji Castle, but I could barely see it in the snowstorm,” I said. “And until now I can’t explain to myself why it was in my dream at all.”
“I always wanted to bring your mother to visit Himeji Castle,” my father confided. “It was a promise I made to her years ago… but every time I proposed to arrange the trip, she would put it off for later. And now…”
He didn’t have to finish the sentence. And now my mother might never accompany us on another trip anywhere, ever again. In her coma in the hospital in Tokyo, did she ever dream of ice castles too and remember my father’s unfulfilled promise to her?
“She was in a movie that was set in Himeji Castle,” I reminded him. “Fuyu No Kodomo. The one where she played the koto and sang the song about snowflakes, Yuki No Kessho.”
“It wasn’t the real castle, Yukiko,” my father told me. “Just a movie set on a soundstage. That was why I made her the promise.”
“Ah,” I said. “So she’s never been to the real castle?”
“No,” my father replied wistfully. “Your mother loved singing and acting, but that was the frustrating part: it was all make-believe, not real. She needed something to anchor her to real life. And you became her anchor.”
That made me smile, but at the same time I found it hard to believe. “I’m not sure about that, Daddy. Sometimes I think of all the things she could have accomplished in her life or her career if she hadn’t stopped when I was born…”
My father gazed into the air as if a film reel of the past was floating before his eyes. “We both stopped everything when you were born,” he said. “We could afford to do that for a while. But then as Starr and Staff became more popular, I had to go off and promote it internationally. I started to miss little bits of your childhood. You know, Yukiko, no matter how wonderful my career has been, I never stop thinking about the days I missed spending with you.”
I nodded thoughtfully. “I guess I can understand that. So perhaps my mother was the lucky one, since she got to change my diapers and sing me to sleep!” I said it ironically, but all the same there was probably some truth to it.
“When I first came to Lauterbrunnen as a teenager, I also had a dream about Hoshi and Jo in the snow,” my father told me. “At that time they were only drawings in my sketchbook that no one else in the world had ever seen. However, one day I showed them to Marilyn and she saw something in them. She told me that the world needed art and fantasy just as much as science and technology. And so I found myself daydreaming about these characters. I didn’t know it, but I had found the direction of my life.”
I sighed. “I still don’t know what the direction of my life will be.”
My father smiled. “Marilyn seems to think it will be something related to music. Even though I told her you are also a kendo champion and quite an accomplished martial artist.”
That made me laugh. “I could do both,” I suggested. “I could play sweet, sad music on my violin during the day and be a fierce onna bugeisha warrior at night like the ones in your stories. Like Lady Kaida with her tiger. No one would suspect that my violin bow is actually a secret weapon.”
There was a twinkle in my father’s eyes. “It’s good to see you laugh, Yukiko. When we first came here to Switzerland I wondered if I would ever see you laugh again. It made my heart sad to see you dealing with so much trauma and pain. It hasn’t destroyed you, though. It’s made you stronger.”
I thought back to those days after our arrival. “When we first came here, you told me that I was stronger than I thought, but I didn’t believe you.”
My father nodded. “The soul has to struggle with itself to become strong,” he said. “You have a brave soul, Yukiko. You are beautiful both inside and out. Just like your mother…”
So, I thought, now I’m not only stronger than I think but also beautiful and brave. I would blush if I thought any of that was true… but perhaps today I really am walking in a fairy tale dream. And Himeji Castle may be just over the horizon.
You’re reading: Memoirs of a Shattered Soul