“What d’you think?” asked the woman, eyes still fixed on the window. “You know, about the girl …”
“How can I say without ever having met her?” I said.
“Most women, you look at their clothes, you know what they’re like,” she said.
I thought about my girlfriend. Then I tried to remember the sort of clothes she wore. I drew a blank. What I could recall of her was all too vague. No sooner had I begun to see her skirt than I lost sight of her blouse; I’d managed to bring her hat to mind when the face changed into some other girl’s. I couldn’t remember a single thing from just half a year before. When it came right down to it, what had I known about her?
“How can I say?” I repeated.
“General impressions are good enough. Whatever comes to mind. Anything you’d care to say, any little bit at all.”
I took a sip of my vodka tonic to gain myself some time. The ice had almost all melted, making the tonic water taste like lemonade. The vodka still packed a punch going down, creating a warm glow in my stomach. A breeze burst through the window and sent white cigarette ash flying all over the desk.
“Seems she’s nice—very nice—keeps everything in order,” I said. “Not too pushy, though not without character, either. Grades in the upper mid-range of her class. Goes to a women’s college or junior college, doesn’t have so many friends, but close ones … Am I on target?”
“Keep going.”
I swirled the glass around in my hand a couple of times, then set it down on the desk. “I don’t know what more to say. In the first place, I don’t even know if what I’ve said so far was anywhere close.”
“You’re pretty much on target,” she said blankly, “pretty much on target.”
Little by little, I was beginning to get a feel for the girl; her presence hovered over everything in the room like a hazy white shadow. No face, no hands, nothing. Just a barely perceptible disturbance in a sea of light. I took another sip of my vodka tonic.
“She’s got a boyfriend,” I continued, “or two. I don’t know. I can’t tell how close they are. But that’s neither here nor there. What matters is … she hasn’t really taken to anything. Her own body, the things she thinks about, what she’s looking for, what others seek in her … the whole works.”
“Uh-huh,” the woman said after a moment’s pause. “I see what you’re saying.”
I didn’t. Oh, I knew what the words meant, but to whom were they directed? And from whose point of view? I was exhausted, wanted just to sleep. If only I could get some sleep, a lot of things would surely become clearer. All the same, I couldn’t believe that getting things clearer would make them any easier.
At that the woman fell silent for a long time. I also held my tongue. Ten, fifteen minutes like that. Nothing better to do with my hands, I ended up drinking half the vodka tonic. The breeze picked up a bit, and the round leaves of the camphor tree began to sway.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have kept you here,” the woman said sometime later. “You did such a beautiful job on the lawn, I was just so pleased.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Let me pay you,” she said, thrusting her big white hand into her dress pocket. “How much is it?”
“They’ll be sending you a regular bill later. You can pay by bank transfer,” I said.
“Oh,” said the woman.
We went back down the same staircase, through the same hallway, out to the front door. The hallway and entry way were just as chilly as when we came in, chilly and dark. I felt I’d returned to my childhood, back in the summers when I used to wade up this shallow creek and would pass under a big iron bridge. It was exactly the same sensation. Darkness, and suddenly the temperature of the water would drop. And the pebbles would have this funny slime. When I got to the front door and put on my tennis shoes, was I ever relieved! Sunlight all around me, the leaf-scented breeze, a few bees buzzing sleepily about the hedge.
“Really beautifully mowed,” said the woman, once again viewing the lawn.
I gave the lawn another look, too. A really beautiful job, to be sure.
The woman reached into her pocket, and started pulling out all kinds of stuff—truly all kinds of junk—from which she picked out a crumpled ten-thousand-yen note. The bill wasn’t even that old, just all crumpled up. It could have passed for fourteen, fifteen years old. After a moment’s hesitation, I decided I’d better not refuse.
“Thank you,” I said.
The woman seemed to have still left something unsaid. As if she didn’t quite know how to put it. She stared down at the glass in her right hand, kind of lost. The glass was empty. Then she looked back up at me.
“You decide to start mowing lawns again, be sure to give me a call. Anytime at all.”
“Right,” I said. “Will do. And say, thanks for the sandwich and the drink.”
The woman hemmed and hawed, then promptly turned an about-face and walked back to the front door. I started the engine on the van and turned on the radio. Getting on three o’clock, it was.
I pulled into a drive-in for a little pick-me-up and ordered a Coca-Cola and spaghetti. The spaghetti was so utterly disgusting I could finish only half of it. But if you really want to know, I wasn’t hungry anyway. A sickly-looking waitress cleared the table, and I dozed off right there, seated on the vinyl-covered chair. The place was empty, after all, and the air-conditioning just right. It was only a short nap—no dreams. If anything, the nap itself seemed like a dream. Although when I opened my eyes, the sun’s rays weren’t as intense as they had been. I drank another Coke, then paid the bill with the ten-thousand-yen note I’d just received.
I went out to the parking lot, got in the van, put the keys on the dashboard, and smoked a cigarette. Loads of minuscule aches came over my weary muscles all at once. All things considered, I was worn out. I put aside any notion of driving and just sank into the seat. I smoked another cigarette. Everything seemed so far off, like looking through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. “I’m sure you must want many things from me,” my girlfriend had written, “but I myself just can’t conceive that there’s anything in me you’d want.”
All I wanted, it came to me, was to mow a good lawn. To give it a once-over with the lawn mower, rake up the clippings, and then trim it nice and even with clippers—that’s all. And that, I can do. Because that’s the way I feel it ought to be done.
Isn’t that right? I spoke out loud.
No answer.
Ten minutes later, the manager of the drive-in came out and crouched by the van to inquire if everything was all right.
“I felt a little faint,” I said.
“Yes, it’s been a scorcher. Shall I bring you some water?”
“Thank you. But really, I’m fine.”
I pulled out of the parking lot and started east. On both sides of the road were different homes, different yards, different people all leading different lives. My hands on the wheel, I took in the whole passing panorama, the lawn mower rattling all the while in the compartment behind.
NOT ONCE SINCE then have I mowed a lawn. Someday, though, should I come to live in a house with a lawn, I’ll probably be mowing again. That’ll be a good while yet, I figure. But when that time comes, I’m sure to do the job just right.
—translated by Alfred Birnbaum
SO I TURNED to Ozawa and asked him, had he ever punched out a guy in an argument?
“What makes you want to ask something like that?” Ozawa squinted his eyes at me. The look seemed out of character on him. As if there’d been a sudden flash of light only he had witnessed. A flare that just as quickly subsided, returning him to his normal passive expression.
No real reason, I told him, only a passing thought. Hadn’t meant anything by it, just asked out of curiosity. Totally uncalled-for, probably.
I proceeded to change the subject, but Ozawa didn’t exactly rally to it. He seemed to be somewhere else in his thoughts, holding back or wavering. I gave up trying to engag
e him in conversation and gazed instead out the window at the rows of silver jets.
I don’t know how the subject came up. We’d been killing time waiting for our plane, and he started talking about how he’d been going to a boxing gym ever since he was in junior high school. More than once, he’d been chosen to represent his university in boxing matches. Even today, at age thirty-one, he still went to the gym every week.
I could hardly picture it. Here was this guy I’d done business with a lot; no way did he strike me as your rough-and-tumble boxer of close to twenty years. The guy was a singularly quiet fellow; he hardly ever spoke. Yet you couldn’t ask for anyone more clear-cut in his work habits. Faultlessly sincere. Never pushed people too far, never talked about others behind their back, never complained. No matter how overworked he was, he never raised his voice or even arched his brows. In a word, he was the sort of guy you couldn’t help but like. Warm, easygoing, a far cry from anything you could call aggressive. Where was the connection between this man and boxing? Why had he taken up the sport in the first place? So I asked that question.
We were drinking coffee in the airport restaurant, waiting for our flight to Niigata. This was the beginning of November; the sky was heavy with clouds. Niigata was snowed in, and planes were running late. The airport was full of people milling about, looking more depressed with each announcement of flight delays. In the restaurant, the heat was too high, and I kept having to wipe off the sweat with my handkerchief.
“Basically, no,” Ozawa suddenly spoke up after a lengthy silence. “From the time I started boxing, I never hit anyone. They pound that into you from the moment you start boxing. Anyone who boxes must absolutely never, without gloves, hit anyone outside the ring. An ordinary person could get into trouble if he hit someone and landed a punch in the wrong place. But if a boxer did it, it’d be intentional assault with a deadly weapon.”
I nodded.
“To be honest, I did hit someone. Once,” Ozawa said. “I was in eighth grade. It was right around the time I was starting to learn how to box. No excuse, but this was before I learned a single boxing technique. I was still on the basic bodybuilding menu. Jumping rope and stretching and running, stuff like that. And the thing is, I didn’t even mean to throw the punch. I just got mad, and my hand flew out ahead of me. I couldn’t stop it. And before I knew it, I’d decked him. I hit the guy, and still my whole body was trembling with rage.”
Ozawa had taken up boxing because his uncle ran a boxing gym. This wasn’t just the local sweat room; this was a major establishment that had launched a two-time East Asia welterweight champion. In fact, it’d been Ozawa’s parents who suggested he go to the gym to begin with. They were worried about their son, the bookworm, always holed up in his room. At first, the boy wasn’t keen on the idea, but he liked his uncle well enough, and, he told himself, if he didn’t like the sport, he could always quit. So all very casually, he got in the habit of commuting regularly to his uncle’s gym, an hour away by train.
After the first few months, Ozawa’s interest in boxing surprised even himself. The biggest reason was that, fundamentally, boxing is a loner’s sport, an extremely solitary pursuit. It was something of a discovery for him, a new world. And that world excited him. The sweat flying off the bodies of the older men, the hard, squeaky feel of the gloves, the intense concentration of men with their muscles tuned to lightning-fast efficiency—little by little, it all took hold of his imagination. Spending Saturdays and Sundays at the gym became one of his few indulgences.
“One of the things I like about boxing is the depth. That’s what grabbed me. Compared to that, hitting and getting hit is no big deal. That’s only the outcome. The same with winning or losing. If you could get to the bottom of the depth, losing doesn’t matter—nothing can hurt you. And anyway, nobody can win at everything; somebody’s got to lose. The important thing is to get deep down into it. That—at least to me—is boxing. When I’m in a match, I feel like I’m at the bottom of a deep, deep hole. So far inside I can’t see anyone else and no one can see me. Way down there in the darkness, doing battle. All alone. But not sad alone,” said Ozawa. “There’s all different kinds of loneliness. There’s the tragic loneliness that tears at your nerves with pain. And then there’s the loneliness that isn’t like that at all—though in order to reach that point, you’ve got to pare your body down. If you make the effort, you get back what you put in. That’s what I learned from boxing.”
Ozawa paused a moment.
“Actually, I’d just as soon not talk about it,” he said. “I even wish I could wipe the story out of my mind entirely. But of course, you never can. Why is it you can’t forget what you really want to forget?” Ozawa broke into a smile. Then he glanced at his watch. We still had plenty of time. He began his deliberation.
The guy Ozawa hit was a classmate. Aoki was his name. Ozawa hated the guy from the very beginning. Why, he couldn’t really say. All he knew was that he hated his guts from the moment he set eyes on him. It was the first time in his life he despised anyone.
“But it does happen, right?” he said. “Maybe once, but everyone has that experience. You loathe someone for no reason whatsoever. I’m not the type to have blind hate, but I swear there are people who just set you off. It’s not a rational thing. But the problem is, in most cases, the other guy feels the same way toward you.
“This kid Aoki was a model student. He got good grades, sat at the head of the class, teacher’s pet, all that. And he was pretty popular, too. Granted, we were an all-boys’ school, but everyone liked him. Everyone except me. I couldn’t stand him. I couldn’t stand his smarts, his calculating ways. Okay, if you asked me what exactly bugged me about him I wouldn’t be able to say. The only thing I can tell you is that I knew what he was all about. And his pride, that headstrong stink of ego he gave off, I couldn’t stand it. Purely physiological, like how someone’s body odor will turn you off. But Aoki was a clever guy and knew how to cover his scent. So most of the kids in the class thought he was clean and kind and considerate. Every time I heard how great people thought he was—of course, I wasn’t about to go against everyone—it burned me up.
“In almost every way, Aoki and I were polar opposites. I was a quiet kid and didn’t stand out in class. I was happy to be left alone. Sure, I had friends, but no real friends for life. In a sense, maybe I was too mature too soon. Instead of hanging around with my classmates, I kept to myself. I read books or listened to my father’s classical records or went to the gym to hear the older guys talk. I wasn’t much to look at. My grades weren’t so bad, but they weren’t so hot. Teachers would forget my name. So, you know, I was the type you never got to know. That’s how I was, never quite surfacing. I never told anybody about the boxing gym or books or records.
“With Aoki, though, whatever the guy did he was like a white swan in a sea of mud. The star of the class, his opinions valued, always on top of things. Even I had to admit that. He was amazingly quick-witted. He could pick up on what others were thinking, and he could redirect his responses to match in no time whatsoever. He had a well-tuned head on his shoulders. No wonder everyone was impressed with Aoki. Everyone but me.
“I figure Aoki had to be aware of what I thought of him. He wasn’t dumb. I could tell he wasn’t too crazy about me. After all, I wasn’t stupid, either. I mean, I read more than anybody else. But you know, when you’re young you gotta show it, so I’m sure I came off stuck-up, even condescending. Plus, the way I kept to myself probably didn’t help.
“Then once, at the end of the term, I got the highest marks on an English exam. It was a first for me, scoring the highest. But it wasn’t an accident. There was something I really wanted—I can’t even remember what it was anymore—and I made this deal with my folks that if I got the best grade in the class they’d buy it for me. So of course I studied like mad. I studied anything that could possibly be covered in the exam. If I had a spare moment, I went over verb conjugations. I practically memorized the whole tex
tbook. So when I aced the test, it was no surprise. It was even predictable.
“But everyone else was caught off guard. The teacher, too. And Aoki, I mean, he was shocked. He had always been the best student in English. The teacher even kidded Aoki about it when he announced the test grades. Aoki turned red. Probably thought people were laughing at him.
“A few days later, someone told me Aoki was spreading a rumor about me. That I’d cheated on the exam, how else could I have scored so high? When I heard that, I got really pissed off. What I should have done was laugh and let it go. But a junior-high-school kid doesn’t have that kind of cool.
“One noon recess, I confronted Aoki. I said I wanted to talk to him alone, away from everybody else. I said I’d heard this rumor, and what was the meaning of it? But Aoki could only show his contempt. Like, why was I getting all bent out of shape? Like, if by some fluke I happened to get the best score, why was I being so defensive, and what right did I have to act so uppity, anyway? After all, everyone knew what really happened, right? Then he tried to brush me aside, probably thinking that since he was in good shape and taller than me he had to be stronger, too. That’s when I hauled off and punched the jerk in the face. It was pure reflex action. I didn’t realize I’d slugged him square on the left cheek until a second later when Aoki fell back sideways and hit his head on a wall. With a hard conk. Blood was running out of his nose and onto his white shirt. He lay there, dazed, not knowing what had happened.
“On my part, I regretted hitting him the instant my fist connected with his cheekbone. I shouldn’t have done it. I felt miserable. It was a totally useless thing to have done. Like I said, my body was still trembling with rage, but I knew I’d done something stupid.
“I considered apologizing to Aoki. But I didn’t. If it had been anybody else but Aoki, I probably would have apologized. I simply couldn’t bring myself to apologize to the creep. I was sorry I hit Aoki, but not sorry enough to say I was sorry. I didn’t feel one iota of remorse toward the guy. Jerks like him deserved to get punched out. He was a worm, and worms get stepped on. Still, I shouldn’t have hit him. A truth I knew deep down, only too late. I’d already slugged him. I left Aoki there and walked off.