by Carlos Hernandez

2.

“Here it is!” Mr. Oono almost yelled from behind me. Looking at the Autumn-painted mountains, imagining his suffering, I had allowed myself to fall into a momentary reverie, and my heart nearly shot like a cannonball through my ribcage when he spoke. I laughed and took a breath, and then turned around to face him. He had disconnected the prosthetic arm and was happily holding it out for me, like Beowulf presenting his grim trophy to Hrothgar. “Here it is!” he said again. And then, enigmatically, he added, “He is my friend.”

A little part of me thought he might be playing another trick, so with good-natured, histrionic suspicion I carefully took it from him. It was lighter than I had expected it to be, and colder. Too cold. Though earlier I had thought it looked muscular, there were no muscles, or even simulated muscles, in the arm: beneath the spongy skin there was only the solid steel casing I had felt earlier that protected the prosthetic’s delicate, bleeding-edge machinery, and that had been given only the vaguest resemblance to the bulging of biceps and triceps. The elbow was perhaps the most obviously unreal part of the arm, as the hinge mechanism they used was sleeker and more elegant than a typical elbow. It gave the prosthetic a somewhat vitiated appearance at the joint, made it seem that it might be prone to breakage there: though now that I’d shaken hands with the thing I knew it was stronger than any normal elbow.

But whatever aesthetic faults I found with the elbow, I could say nothing against the hand; they had cloned it almost perfectly. I asked Mr. Oono to let me compare the two, and he took a step toward me with an unnervingly willing smile and proffered his left hand like a queen waiting to be kissed. The prosthetic was a tromp l’oeil replica of it, down to the fortune Fate had inscribed on its palm: which of course made it unnatural, as no one’s left and right palm-prints match exactly. The fingernails were very artfully done, appropriately pocked and streaked so as to appear to be weakening with age (though I was sure they were virtually indestructible). The rubber around the knuckles bulged a little more than the skin of the real hand, and the Venus’s Mound was as hard as a jade egg, but other than those little differences it was virtually indistinguishable from the left hand. If we wore a long-sleeve shirt I wouldn’t think it was a prosthetic at all. At least not until I shook it.

“Maybe you want I show this?” he asked, and when I looked up from studying the arm I saw he had taken off his shirt--he must have grown quite proficient at undressing with one hand--and walked toward me leading with his right shoulder. “This is how it fits,” he said. The right shoulder had been mechanized to accommodate the arm: beneath its skin bolts bulged and metal created corners, and a panel had been created to allow easy access to the wiring. Four plugs on the arm would lock in place with four plugs in the shoulder to marry the two. It was, I was sure, sturdier than it looked.

I bowed and thanked him and offered him back his prosthetic with both hands, the way a kneeling knight is presented his sword by his king. But instead of taking it, he said, “Wait! Not too fast, mister! Watch this!” and, switching his gaze to the prosthetic, made the dismembered hand make a sudden fist. I knew he could control the arm from a distance--what kind of reporter would I be if I didn’t?--but it’s a very different thing to know something versus experiencing it. The show I had to put on to keep from dropping the arm was pure vaudeville.

Mr. Oono laughed a strange, halting laugh--almost like a laugh in translation--and said, “He is very funny. All the time he is funny. Always playing jokes.”

Still collecting myself, I replied, “With all due respect, Mr. Oono, you made the hand do that.”

He nodded in response and, taking the arm, said with a smile, “Yes. We make the good team.” And then, once more, he said, “He is my friend.”

3.

We sat at the kotatsu, where Mr. Oono poured us both a fragranceless tea--with his left hand. He did not take back his prosthetic from me, instead insisting that I place it on my side of the table for now. I took out my notebook and asked him, “We should begin soon. Is the translator on his way?”

He gave me a look that, without the benefit of a translator, I could not interpret, and asked, “Do you like the apartment?”

“Yes. It’s a very nice place you have here. Beautiful view.”

“It is too expensive!” He stood up and gestured with his left hand. “There is no space. I live like the doll! And for this my son pay 175,000¥ all month? Do not write that this is nice place. Write it is small and so expensive. I will move to the cheapest place.”