“Anytime you think you want a girlfriend, come to me,” she said. “I’ll fix you up right away.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“All right, Toru, tell me the truth. You think I’m an old matchmaker, don’t you?”
“To some extent,” I said, telling her the truth, but with a smile. Hatsumi smiled, too. She looked good when she smiled.
“Tell me something else, Toru,” she said. “What do you think about Nagasawa and me?”
“What do you mean what do I think? About what?”
“About what I ought to do. From now on.”
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” I said, taking a slug of the well-chilled beer.
“That’s all right. Tell me exactly what you think.”
“Well, if I were you, I’d leave him. I’d find someone with a more normal way of looking at things and live happily ever after. There’s no way in hell you can be happy with that guy. The way he lives, it never crosses his mind to try to make himself happy or to make others happy. Staying with him can only wreck your nervous system. To me, it’s already a miracle that you’ve been with him three years. Of course, I’m very fond of him in my own way. He’s a fun guy, and he has lots of great qualities. He has strengths and abilities that I could never hope to match. But finally, his ideas about things and the way he lives his life are not normal. Sometimes, when I’m talking to him, I feel as if I’m going round and round in circles. The same process that takes him higher and higher keeps me going around in circles. It makes me feel so empty! Finally, our very systems are totally different. Do you see what I’m saying?”
“I do,” Hatsumi said as she brought me another beer from the refrigerator.
“Plus, after he gets into the Foreign Ministry and does a year of training, he’ll be going overseas. What are you going to do all that time? Wait for him? He has no intention of marrying anyone.”
“I know that, too.”
“So I’ve got nothing else to say.”
“I see,” said Hatsumi.
I slowly filled my glass with beer.
“You know, when we were shooting pool before, something popped into my mind,” I said. “I was an only child, but the whole time I was growing up I never once felt deprived or wished I had brothers or sisters. I was satisfied being alone. But all of a sudden, shooting pool with you, I had this feeling like I wished I had had an elder sister like you—really chic and a knockout in a midnight blue dress and golden earrings and great with a pool cue.”
Hatsumi flashed me a happy smile. “That’s got to be the nicest thing anybody’s said to me in the past year,” she said. “Really.”
“All I want for you,” I said, blushing, “is for you to be happy. It’s crazy, though. You seem like someone who could be happy with just about anybody, so how did you end up with Nagasawa, of all people?”
“Things like that just happen. There’s probably not much you can do about them. It’s certainly true in my case. Of course, Nagasawa would say it’s my responsibility, not his.”
“I’m sure he would.”
“But anyway, Toru, I’m not the smartest girl in the world. If anything, I’m sort of on the stupid side, and old-fashioned. I couldn’t care less about ‘systems’ and ‘responsibility.’ All I want is to get married and have a man I love hold me in his arms every night and make kids. That’s plenty for me. It’s all I want out of life.”
“And what Nagasawa wants out of life has nothing to do with that.”
“People change, though, don’t you think?” Hatsumi asked.
“You mean, like, they go out into society and get their butts kicked and grow up kind of thing?”
“Sure. And if he’s away from me for a long time, his feelings for me could change, don’t you think?”
“Maybe so, if he were an ordinary guy,” I said. “But he’s different. He’s incredibly strong-willed—stronger than you or I can imagine. And he only makes himself stronger with every day that goes by. If something smashes into him, he just works to make himself stronger. He’d eat slugs before he’d back down to anyone. What do you expect to get from a guy like that?”
“But there’s nothing I can do but wait for him,” said Hatsumi with her chin in her hand.
“You love him that much?”
“I do,” she answered without a moment’s hesitation.
“Oh, brother,” I said with a sigh, drinking down the last of my beer. “It must be a wonderful thing to be so sure that you love somebody.”
“I’m a stupid, old-fashioned girl,” she said. “Have another beer?”
“No, thanks, I’ve gotta get going. Thanks for the bandage and beer.”
As I was standing in the entryway putting on my shoes, the telephone rang. Hatsumi looked at me, looked at the phone, and looked at me again. “Good night,” I said, stepping outside. As I shut the door, I caught a glimpse of Hatsumi picking up the receiver. It was the last time I ever saw her.
BY THE TIME I GOT BACK to the dorm, it was eleven-thirty. I went straight to Nagasawa’s room and knocked on his door. After the tenth knock it occurred to me that this was Saturday night. Nagasawa always got overnight permission on Saturday nights, supposedly to stay at his relatives’ house.
I went back to my room, took off my tie, put my jacket and pants on a hanger, changed into my pajamas, and brushed my teeth. Oh no, I thought, tomorrow is Sunday again. Sundays seemed to be rolling around every four days. Another two Sundays and I would be twenty years old. I stretched out in bed and stared at my calendar as dark feelings came over me.
I SAT AT MY DESK to write my Sunday morning letter to Naoko, drinking coffee from a big cup and listening to old Miles Davis records. A fine rain was falling outside, while my room had the chill of an aquarium. The smell of mothballs lingered in the thick sweater I had just taken out of a storage box. High up on the windowpane clung a huge, fat fly, unmoving. With no wind to stir it, the Rising Sun hung limp against the flagpole like the toga of a Roman senator. A skinny, timid-looking brown dog that had wandered into the quadrangle seemed to be sniffing every blossom in the flower bed. I couldn’t begin to imagine why any dog would have to go around sniffing flowers on a rainy day.
My letter was a long one, and whenever my cut right palm began to hurt from holding the pen, I would let my eyes wander out to the rainy quadrangle.
I began by telling Naoko how I had given my right hand a nasty cut while working in the record store, then went on to say that Nagasawa, Hatsumi, and I had had a sort of celebration the night before for Nagasawa’s having passed his Foreign Ministry exam. I described the restaurant and the food. The meal was a good one, I said, but the atmosphere changed to something uncomfortable partway through.
I wondered if I should write about Kizuki in connection with having shot pool with Hatsumi and decided to go ahead. It was something I ought to write about, I felt.
I still remember the last shot Kizuki took that day—the day he died. It was a difficult cushion shot that I never expected him to make. Luck seemed to be with him, though: the shot was absolutely perfect, and the white and red balls hardly made a sound as they brushed each other on the green felt for the last point of the game. It was such a beautiful shot, I can still bring back a vivid image of it to this day. For nearly two and a half years after that, I never touched a cue.
The night I played pool with Hatsumi, though, the thought of Kizuki never crossed my mind until the first game ended, and this came as a major shock to me. I had always assumed that I would be reminded of Kizuki whenever I played pool. But not until the first game was over and I bought a Pepsi from a vending machine and started drinking it did I even think of him. It was the Pepsi machine that did it: there had been one in the pool hall we used to play in, and we had often bet drinks on the outcome of our games.
I felt guilty that I hadn’t thought of Kizuki right away, as if I had somehow abandoned him. Back in my room, though, I came to think of it this way: two and a half years have gone by since it
happened, and Kizuki is still seventeen years old. Not that this means my memory of him has faded. The things that his death gave rise to are still there, bright and clear, inside me, some of them even clearer than when they were new. What I want to say is this: I’m going to turn twenty soon. Part of what Kizuki and I shared when we were sixteen and seventeen has already vanished, and no amount of crying is going to bring that back. I can’t explain it any better than this, but I think that you can probably understand what I felt and what I am trying to say. In fact, you are probably the only one in the world who can understand.
I think of you now more than ever. It’s raining today. Rainy Sundays make it hard for me. When it rains, I can’t do laundry, which means I can’t do ironing. I can’t go walking, and I can’t lie down on the roof. About all I can do is put the record player on auto repeat and listen to Kind of Blue over and over while I watch the rain falling in the quadrangle. As I wrote to you earlier, I don’t wind my spring on Sundays. That’s why this letter is so damn long. I’m stopping now. I’m going to the dining hall for lunch.
Good-bye.
THERE WAS NO SIGN OF MIDORI AT THE NEXT DAY’S LECTURE, either. What was happening with her? Ten days had gone by since I last talked to her on the telephone. I thought about giving her a call, but decided against it. She had said that she would call me.
That Thursday I saw Nagasawa in the dining hall. He sat down next to me with a tray full of food and apologized for having made our “party” so unpleasant.
“Never mind,” I said. “I should be thanking you for a great dinner. I have to admit, though, it was a funny way to celebrate your first job.”
“It sure as hell was,” he said.
A few minutes went by as we ate in silence.
“I made up with Hatsumi,” he said.
“I’m not surprised.”
“I was kinda tough on you, too, as I recall it.”
“What’s with all the apologizing?” I asked. “Are you sick?”
“I may be,” he said with a few little nods. “Hatsumi tells me you told her to leave me.”
“It only makes sense,” I said.
“Yeah, I guess so,” said Nagasawa.
“She’s a great girl,” I said, slurping my miso soup.
“I know,” he said with a sigh. “A little too great for me.”
I WAS SLEEPING the sleep of death when the buzzer rang to let me know I had a call. It brought me back from the absolute core of sleep in total confusion. I felt as if I had been sleeping with my head soaked in water until my brain swelled up. The clock said 6:15, but I had no idea if that meant A.M. or P.M., and I couldn’t remember what day it was. I looked out the window and realized there was no flag on the pole. It was probably P.M. So raising the flag might serve some purpose after all.
“Hey, Watanabe, are you free now?” Midori asked.
“I dunno, what’s today?”
“Friday.”
“Morning or evening?”
“Evening, of course! You’re so weird! Let’s see, it’s, uh, six-eighteen p.m.”
So it was P.M. after all! That’s right, I had been stretched out on my bed, reading a book, when I dozed off. Friday. I got my head working. I didn’t have to go to the record store on Friday nights. “Yeah, I’m free. Where are you?”
“Ueno Station. Why don’t you meet me in Shinjuku? I’ll leave now.”
We set a time and place and hung up.
WHEN I GOT TO DUG, Midori was sitting at the far end of the counter with a drink. She wore a man’s wrinkled, white balmacaan coat, a thin yellow sweater, blue jeans, and two bracelets on one wrist.
“What’re you drinking?” I asked.
“Tom Collins.”
I ordered a whiskey and soda, then realized there was a big suitcase by Midori’s feet.
“I took a trip,” she said. “Just got back.”
“Where’d you go?”
“South to Nara and north to Aomori.”
“On the same trip?!”
“Don’t be stupid. I may be strange, but I can’t go north and south at the same time. I went to Nara with my boyfriend, and then I took off to Aomori alone.”
I took a sip of my whiskey and soda, then used a match to light the Marlboro that Midori had in her mouth. “You must have had a hell of a time, with the funeral and all.”
“Nah, a funeral’s a piece of cake. We’ve had plenty of practice. You put on a black kimono and sit there like a lady and everybody else takes care of business—an uncle, a neighbor, like that. They bring the sake, order the sushi, say comforting things, cry, carry on, divide up the keepsakes. It’s a piece of cake. A picnic. Compared to nursing somebody day after day, it’s an absolute picnic. We were drained, my sister and me. We couldn’t even cry. We didn’t have any tears left. Really. Except, when you do that, they start whispering about you: ‘Those girls are cold as ice.’ So then, we’re never going to cry, that’s just how the two of us are. I know we could have faked it, but we would never do anything like that. The sons of bitches! The more they wanted to see us cry, the more determined we were not to give them that satisfaction. My sister and I are totally different types, but when it comes to something like that, we’re in absolute sync.”
Midori’s bracelets jangled on her arm as she waved for the waiter and ordered another Tom Collins and a small bowl of pistachios.
“So then, after the funeral ended and everybody went home, the two of us drank sake till the sun went down. Polished off one of those huge halfgallon bottles, and half of another one, and the whole time we were dumping on everybody—this one’s an idiot, that one’s a shithead, one guy looks like a mangy dog, another one’s a pig, so-and-so’s a hypocrite, that one’s a crook. You have no idea how great it felt!”
“I can imagine.”
“We got plastered and went to bed—both of us out cold. We slept for hours, and if the phone rang or something, we just let it go. Dead to the world. Finally, after we woke up, we ordered sushi and talked about what to do. We decided to close the shop for a while and enjoy ourselves. We’d been killing ourselves for months and we deserved a break. My sister just wanted to hang around with her boyfriend for a while, and I decided I’d take mine on a trip for a couple of days and fuck like crazy.” Midori clamped her mouth shut and rubbed her ears. “Oops, sorry.”
“That’s O.K.,” I said. “So you went to Nara.”
“Yeah, I’ve always liked that place. The temples, the deer park.”
“And did you fuck like crazy?”
“No, not at all, not even once,” she said with a sigh. “The second we walked into the hotel room and dumped our bags, my period started. A real gusher.”
I couldn’t help laughing.
“Hey, it’s not funny. I was a week early! I couldn’t stop crying when that happened. I think all the stress threw me off. My boyfriend got sooo mad!He’s like that: he gets mad right away. It wasn’t my fault, though. It’s not like I wanted to get my period. And, well, mine are kind of on the heavy side anyway. The first day or two, I don’t want to do anything. Make sure you keep away from me then.”
“I’d like to, but how can I tell?” I asked.
“O.K., I’ll wear a hat for a couple of days after my period starts. A red one. That should work,” she said with a laugh. “If you see me on the street and I’m wearing a red hat, don’t talk to me, just run away.”
“Great. I wish all girls would do that,” I said. “So anyhow, what’d you do in Nara?”
“What else could we do? We fed the deer and walked all over the place. It was just awful! We had a big fight and I haven’t seen him since we got back. I hung around for a couple of days and decided to take a nice trip all by myself. So I went to Aomori. I stayed with a friend in Hirosaki for the first two nights, and then I started traveling around—Shimokita, Tappi, places like that. They’re nice. I once wrote a map brochure for the area. Ever been there?”
“Never.”
“So anyway,” said Midori, t
aking a sip of her Tom Collins and wrenching open a pistachio, “the whole time I was traveling by myself, I was thinking of you. I was thinking how nice it would be if I could have you with me.”
“How come?”
“How come?!” Midori looked at me with eyes focused on nothingness. “Whaddya mean ‘How come?’?!”
“Just that. How come you were thinking of me?”
“Maybe because I like you, that’s how come! Why else would I be thinking of you? Who would ever think they wanted to be with somebody they didn’t like?”
“But you’ve got a boyfriend,” I said. “You don’t have to think about me.” I took a slow sip of my whiskey and soda.
“Meaning I’m not allowed to think about you if I’ve got a boyfriend?”
“No, that’s not it, I just—”
“Now get this straight, Watanabe,” said Midori, pointing at me. “I’m warning you, I’ve got a whole month’s worth of misery crammed inside me and getting ready to blow. So watch what you say to me. Any more of that kind of stuff and I’ll flood this place with tears. Once I get started, I’m good for the whole night. Are you ready for that? I’m an absolute animal when I start crying, it doesn’t matter where I am! I’m not kidding.”
I nodded and kept quiet. Ordering a second whiskey and soda, I ate a few pistachios. Somewhere behind the sound of a sloshing shaker and clinking glasses and the scrape of an ice maker, Sarah Vaughan sang an old-fashioned love song.
“Things haven’t been right between me and my boyfriend ever since the tampon incident.”
“Tampon incident?”
“Yeah, I was out drinking with him and a few of his friends about a month ago and I told them the story of a woman in my neighborhood who blew out a tampon when she sneezed. Funny, right?”
“That is funny,” I said with a laugh.
“Yeah, all the other guys thought so, too. But he got mad and said I shouldn’t be talking about such dirty things. Such a wet blanket!”