The Miracle
"Excuse me..."
"Yes?"
"Aren't you... Yuri Kawai?"
No, I am not Yuri Kawai, though I'm mistaken for her often enough. Usually, of course, I merely smile with a half-ironic air of being sorry to disappoint, and mumble something about wishing I was. What mischievous spirit possessed me on this particular occasion? "Yes," I said. "As a matter of fact I am."
It might have had something to do with the fact---the connection is admittedly obscure---that I woke up this morning to the sound of seagulls crying and thought they were children playing. My first thought, before realizing my mistake, was, "Has summer vacation started already?"
If I'm confused, there's good reason. It suddenly turned hot---extraordinarily hot for mid-May. August heat, in a season when snow is not unheard of! It's unsettling, disorienting. And yet---such is the force of habit!---I somehow can't leave the house in the morning without putting on a sweater. It's the same with the other girls at the office. We're like programmed robots, dressing by the calendar regardless of the weather.
I think I am going through a crisis in my life. I'm not sure---maybe it's nothing. There is, for example, the blind, strangling hatred I feel for that dog across the road, Kato-san's mutt. Kato-san's a widower; he lives alone. He's a taxi driver or something and works long hours. He's almost never home. What does a man like him need a dog for? Company? A mongrel like that? It doesn't bark, it doesn't howl – it groans. I lie awake listening to it, thinking to myself, "That's what I'd sound like if someone were torturing me." And I long to torture it in a manner worthy of those groans. I picture myself dismembering it, setting it on fire... And then I take myself to task: "It's a dog, for heaven sake! A stupid, innocent, insignificant dog! And look what it's doing to you!"
Maybe what I need is a change. Supposing I quit my job – or better still, just don't show up one morning. Supposing I vanish. Get into my car and drive somewhere. Yes – and mother? Who will look after her? But supposing (you can't help the thoughts that come into your head!) – supposing I... abandon my mother. Does this prove I'm evil? Or does the fact that I haven't yielded to these dreadful thoughts – haven't carried them out - prove I'm good? I don't know, I don't know! Lord, show me the path...
My boyfriend (for want of a better word) mocks my belief in God. He says the obvious things. "Look at the world – look around you! Pick up a newspaper! Would the sort of God you Christians believe in have created such an awful, unholy, wretched mess? And expect to be praised for it, yet?"
"Yes," I say, "but would you and I love each other if there were no God?"
That shuts him up – not because he loves me so deeply that such a love is inconceivable without a divine origin, but because he prefers to have me think that he does. Why, I wonder? It's not my money he's after – I have none, and he knows it. But it's true that he is somehow terrified at the thought of losing me, though he has two other girlfriends that I know about (he doesn't know that I know) and probably others that I don't. Is he terrified of losing them too? Probably. He's insecure to that degree. A strange man, my boyfriend. We've known each other since junior high school. I hated him. He used to sit behind me and pull my hair.
***
As usual, Mayumi sidles over to my desk at noon sharp and says, "How about a bite to eat?" Mayumi is someone else I knew in junior high school. It's pure coincidence that we work in the same office. We weren't really close as children, though we were in the same after-school volleyball club, and during the years I was away we naturally lost track of each other. When I came back and applied for the job there she was, an employee in good standing. Her recommendation had a lot to do with my being hired. There were many applicants. Our employer is the City of Otaru. Public sector jobs are in great demand. Every vacancy brings hordes of candidates hankering after a secure and easy life. Mayumi is four months pregnant and will soon be leaving. Just the other day the head of our department asked me if I would be willing to replace her. It would mean additional responsibilities, and additional pay. I promised him an answer by the end of the week.
"I'm in the mood for pizza," she says.
"How can you eat that greasy stuff with a baby, an embryo – "
"If my doctor has no objections, why should you? He said I can eat anything I want."
"I don't trust doctors."
"No, you put all your trust in God, I know."
"Listen," I say after the waitress has taken our orders, "this guy comes up to me on the street this morning and asks me if I'm Yuri Kawai."
"Again?"
"I must really look like her, since it keeps happening. Don't you think?"
"I don't see it. Honestly. Not at all."
"Me either. Anyway, something strange came over me, I'm not sure what exactly, and I said, 'Well, yes, as a matter of fact...'"
"No!"
"Crazy, eh? You should have seen him! He – my God, the power these people have! It was all the poor fellow could do to stammer out a request for an autograph. So flustered he could hardly get a notebook out of his knapsack for me to sign."
"He's a student?"
"Mm. I guess so. And then, turning red as a crab from the strain of gathering up his courage, he says, 'Can I... can I... this evening... buy you a drink?'"
"How'd you get rid of him?"
"I told him I'd meet him by the canal at six."
"No! Emi, you didn't!"
"I did!"
"Emi, don't go."
"Why?"
"I don't know. I have a bad feeling. Pregnant women, you know, are peculiarly sensitive. Please, Emi. Don't go."
"Mayu, if you'd seen him – "
"Pizza all dressed" – here's our waitress, setting down Mayu's pizza. Looking at it, I feel as if I'm the pregnant one, having an attack of nausea. "I'll bring you your salad right away," she says to me, as though to reassure me.
***
At five I call my mother. "I'll be late," I say. "Overtime."
"Overtime!"
Mother's no pushover. Alzheimer's dulls the faculties of most people, but seems to have sharpened hers. Actually, no, she doesn't have Alzheimer's, she's just... well, not as young as she used to be. With age, I guess, your sense of perspective changes. What was important no longer seems so; instead, trivia becomes magnified out of all proportion. She used to read newspapers, magazines, books; she knew what was going on in the world; she wrote letters to the editors of the national newspapers – one of which, I remember, came up for discussion in my high school civics class. Now she reads nothing – having outgrown all that, I suppose - and is perfectly indifferent to the world outside our own home; but she knows what goes on inside the home, including my routine comings and goings, with minute exactitude. She knows I don't work overtime, and immediately senses a false note in my rather hastily contrived excuse.
"Yes," I say, "the computers crashed this afternoon, they were down for two hours, we all have to work late."
"Tsk, tsk," grins Mayumi when I finally put down the phone. "Lying to your mother."
I close my eyes. "You know that girl in Kanagawa who murdered her mother? I know just how she must have felt."
"Saitama."
"Eh?"
"It was in Saitama, not Kanagawa."
"All right, Saitama then. You don't know how lucky you are."
Mayumi's mother is dead. Her face clouds ever so slightly. It was a tactless remark, of course, and I am immediately sorry.
"I didn't think so when I was fifteen," she says.
"I'm sorry, Mayu, really." Lord, show me the path!
***
It's five fifteen and I'm to meet him at six. For the first time it occurs to me that I don't know his name. Nor, for that matter, can I remember his face – it was insignificant to that degree. This is stupid. Maybe Mayu's right. Maybe I won't go. Not because I'm afraid, but because what I crave – really crave – is not company but solitude. Is it possible, in this age of national government databases, biometric IDs, DNA testing, security cameras everywhere and whatnot, to vanish into some rabbit hole, or black hole, or Isle of Monte Cristo... in short, to give birth to yourself as an adult and start life all over again? Is it possible? Oh, to wake up one fine morning and find myself all alone in the world! No mother, no boyfriend, no job... And no name. Amnesia! Lord, strike me with amnesia!
***
The church I attend is two blocks from City Hall. It is a tiny stone building, very un-Japanese; if anything, it reminds me of Holland, or Denmark; not so much of anything I saw there as of something out of Hans Christian Andersen, or... what's the name of that Dutch story? Hans Brinker. In fact the minister, Father Kramer, is a South African, a massive man, tall and stout, as large as his church is small, with clear blue eyes and a vast blond beard that covers the knot of his tie. His size belies his gentleness, his soft-spoken manner, his ready smile – a dazzling smile, really; yes, there is power in a smile like that; I'm almost tempted to say it's a gift from God. Do I sound like I'm in love with him? Maybe I am. Maybe I joined his church hoping he would seduce me. Psychoanalysis, I believe, reduces everything we do to motives of that sort – truly, for all I know. Anyway, he hasn't, though he lives alone, his wife apparently having left him years ago; his interest in me – for he does take an interest in me – is purely that of shepherd to sheep; his guidance is invaluable to me; I genuinely believe that without his help I might, around the time I was fortunate enough to meet him, have had a nervous breakdown, or committed suicide, or murder; and that with his help, one day, I will come to know God.
We met at City Hall. He'd come to renew the alien registration card every foreigner is obliged to carry. That isn't my department, but I'm the one he happened to approach, and I directed him to the right wicket. We fell into a bit of talk. His Japanese is perfect, or very nearly so. Later it struck me that he probably knew quite well where the alien registration section was, and approached me on purpose because he sensed some trouble in me. He has that kind of insight. Without any unnatural emphasis, he told me where his church was and invited me to drop by if ever I felt like it. He smiled, bowed slightly, and went about his business. I went to see him that very day, after work. At first I felt a little self-conscious about taking him up on his invitation so immediately – what would he think? Would he be proud of his power? Or would the psychoanalytical explanation occur to him? But I soon laid my doubts to rest. They were, after all, so petty; there was too much at stake for that kind of nonsense.
***
He comes out of his office to greet me as though I am the one person on earth he'd been sitting there wishing to see. He has that way with everyone, I know, but it never occurs to me on that account to question his sincerity.
"Father, is it permitted to pray for amnesia?"
"Amnesia!" He laughs. It is the laugh of a seaman – yes, of a seaman; though why that of all metaphors should strike a woman who has never dealt with seamen or heard one laugh, I don't know.
"Hold your horses!" he says, still laughing. "Let's get to know each other first. Let me usher you into a chair, offer you some iced barley tea..." He is amused at the urgency with which I've sprung the unexpected question at him; his amusement is contagious; I can't help smiling myself as I follow him into his office.
"Amnesia!" he says again as he hands me my tea. "And why – "
I am mortified to suddenly find myself in tears – where could they have come from? "Father... father..."
"Emi-chan, what - ?"
He reaches behind him for the box of tissue paper on the desk, and hands it to me. I take one, raise my glasses, dab my eyes, blow my nose. What a spectacle I'm making of myself. "I'm sorry." I force a smile. "I don't know what came over me."
"Are you all right?"
"Yes. Yes, apart from being terribly embarrassed."
"Embarrassed? Here? My dear, in this office, in this church, there is no such thing as embarrassment. No such thing. Embarrassment withers in this atmosphere. It crumbles, it can't survive. There. It's gone."
"It's just... not like me to lose control of myself like that."
"It doesn't hurt, you know. Tears are therapeutic - 'tears such as angels weep,' as Milton said. He or she from whom God withholds the gift of tears... but what's this about amnesia?"
"Father, I want to forget everything! Forget who I am, where I come from, the people I know, the... I want to wake up one morning and start life over again!"
"Well, do so then."
"Pardon?"
"Do so."
"How?"
"My dear, it is within the power of all of us to be reborn."
"Through faith, you mean."
"Certainly through faith."
"I know, but... Father... do you know Yuri Kawai?"
"The singer? It'd be hard to live in Japan and not know her, don't you think?"
"Have you seen her?"
"Yes, on TV, in the newspaper. An 'idol,' they call her. 'Aidoru.' It's rude of me to say so, but sometimes I do wish the Japanese would leave the English language alone, unless they're prepared to learn it properly."
"Do I look like her?"
"Look like her! You! No. Emi-chan, surely you don't – "
"No, Father, no. You misunderstand me. I don't mean I want to look like her, it's just that... somehow I keep being mistaken for her. She's from here, you know, and I'm constantly being stopped on the street: 'Are you Yuri Kawai? Aren't you Yuri Kawai?'"
"But why? That's incredible! I look at you now, and... no, there's not a trace of resemblance, not a trace!"
"This morning a boy asked me - a university student, by the look of him - and... I don't know, I don't know what came over me... I said yes."
"Emi – "
"I'm to meet him at the canal at six." I glance at my watch. "It's ten past six now. Tell me what to do, Father. Be a father to me. I never knew my own father. Tell me what to do!"
All this time I've been seated on a kind of armchair, with him on his feet, hovering over me as if afraid I'll bolt, or dissolve into my component elements, or... I don't know what. But now abruptly he draws himself up to his full height and, seizing his hat from the coat rack, says, "Come. We'll meet him together."
***
Imagine my surprise when Father Kramer recognizes him before I do. "You!" he bursts out, laughing his rolling seaman's laugh. "You!" The boy just about jumps out of his skin. He'd been sitting, or rather perching, on a sort of guardrail lining the canal. The water gleams in the setting sun. Tiny fishing boats, moored to the quay, bob up and down, their sails rippling in the early evening breeze. It's suddenly chilly, and though I laughed at myself this morning for wearing a sweater, now I'm glad to have it.
Is this the boy? It's funny – the only thing about him that seems familiar is his knapsack, the little purple knapsack from which he withdrew the notebook he had me sign.
"Segawa, Segawa, I'm surprised at you!" the father is saying. "What is the meaning of this? Eh? Yuri Kawai! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!"
"But Father, what have I done?" Segawa, having got over his initial astonishment, is smiling; it is characteristic of the father's manner – perhaps I should call it his art - that he can rebuke someone in all seriousness, and be taken seriously, and yet provoke neither anger, nor resentment, nor embarrassment – he spoke truly when he said embarrassment withers in his presence – but a smile.
"What have you done? I'll tell you what you've done. You have, without the one excuse that might have sufficed to exonerate you, that of blindness, mistaken this estimable young lady for Yuri Kawai, a no-talent, dime-a-dozen 'aidoru,' 'tarento' – whatever terms of endearment the media is lavishing upon her this week. You have further shown yourself tasteless enough to admire Yuri Kawai – otherwise why would you have asked a girl you thought was her for an autograph? Eh? Well? Have you anything to say in your defense?"
"I – "
"Your punishment is to be left alone to face the lady's wrath, and if it consumes you, it's nothing less than you deserve!" His stride as he left us was so long and rapid that in the time it took to formulate the thought to call him back and demand an explanation for such extraordinary behavior, he was already beyond the range of our voices.
***
"So," says Segawa with a shy smile, "you're not Yuri Kawai."
The jazz café we're sitting in is a converted stone warehouse a block south of the canal. Western-style stone buildings – warehouses, shops, banks adorned (rather comically in the eyes of scoffers) with pseudo-classical-Greek columns – are our city's main attraction, many of them lately converted into restaurants, museums, boutiques and whatnot. Built during a local economic boom a century or so ago, in Otaru's heyday as a gritty but thriving port, they draw tourists from all over Japan, and from abroad too – because, say what you like about phoniness, this style of architecture is unique in this country, and uniqueness is always intriguing. The solidity of stone is as exotic to us – I remember explaining this to some people I met in Paris who found the oohing and aahing of Japanese tourists a little overdone – as our characteristic wood-and-paper flimsiness is to Western tourists here.
"Look over there," I say, leaning forward and lowering my voice so that it can be barely heard above the music. (I'm no connoisseur and I could be wrong, but it sounds to me like Thelonious Monk.) "See that handsome sexy young man with the gray wool hat pulled low over his forehead? That's my boyfriend."
"Oh? Who's the girl he's with?"
"That's his little secret. We won't pry. No, I am not Yuri Kawai. I'm sorry to disappoint you."
"Oh no! I - "
"Well, to have deceived you, then, if you won't admit being disappointed. I am not always above being deceitful, though I believe I am fundamentally honest. For example, I am five years older than my boyfriend thinks I am. And how old are you, if you don't mind my asking?"
"Me? Twenty."
"I'm twenty-seven, and there are times I feel fifty. Tell me: how do you come to know Father Kramer?"
"Oh, it's a long story..."
"Good. It will help us while away a long evening."
"I don't mean long in that sense. I mean... hard to explain."
"You mean none of my business."
"No!"
"Your face is as red as the tulips in my mother's garden. My mother goes into raptures over her tulips. Last Saturday afternoon as she gazed at them glowing in the sunshine she suddenly burst out, 'Just look at those tulips! They're blooming like roses!' I laughed, thinking she was making a joke, but my laughter only made her angry. What school do you go to? Otaru University of Commerce?"
"Yes, but I..."
"You what? What's the matter with you? You're not a child. Speak! Express yourself! Think of me as an older sister who's so far above you in age and experience that you can blurt out anything that's on your mind, anything, without being embarrassed – it won't matter because I'm not part of your world anyway and after this cup of coffee we'll go our separate ways and never see each other again. You see what I mean? But in the short time we're together I want you to feel free to tell me everything, even the things you normally wouldn't dream of telling anyone else."
"I don't want to go into business."
"That's something you wouldn't dream of telling anyone else?"
"No, I mean... I was saying before... I go to Otaru University of Commerce, but..."
"Ah, I see. Well, what do you want to 'go into'?"
"I want to... I want to be a missionary."
"A missionary!"
"Is that so strange?"
"Well... it is an unusual ambition, in our day and age, yes."
"I know."
"I begin to see the connection to Father Kramer."
"Hey."
My boyfriend has joined us. We're at a small round wooden table for two, and he's squatting on his haunches, his chin resting on the edge of the table. Segawa shifts his chair slightly – the legs grate against the stone floor - in order to give him a little more room.
"Who's your friend?" he asks, ignoring Segawa and looking straight at me with an insolent smile that would look good on a fifteen-year-old but on him looks idiotic – not that it would occur to him to suspect as much; self-doubt is not within my boyfriend's emotional range. That's what I once liked about him.
"Who's yours?" I shoot back.
The piano piece tinkles to an end; now horns are sounding. African, I would judge from the rhythm.
"A client."
Is he being funny? Maybe not. He's a truck driver for Takyubin, the parcel delivery firm. That's his day job, and entertaining 'clients' doesn't come into it. Does he have a night job too? Pimp? Gigolo? Host club host? He's handsome enough. Why shouldn't he make money off his body, if he can? We've never really discussed money, but now that I think of it, he always seems to have an unlimited supply of it. Strange that it never made me wonder before. What an erratic, capricious instrument the human mind is! And we talk of reason! Sometimes I imagine God idly dropping random thoughts into our heads, just to see how we'll react – and that's what we call thinking.
"Vanish," my boyfriend says, turning now to Segawa and looking at him through sleepy, half-closed eyes. Then, to me, "I delivered a package to her. She insisted on buying me a cup of coffee."
I would have expected Segawa to slink away – he seems the slinking-away type – but he makes no move to do so, and if there's any tension in him at the thought of what my vaguely thuggish-looking boyfriend might have in mind, he doesn't show it.
"Well," I say to my boyfriend, "suppose you go on with your evening, and let me go on with mine."
"No," he says, "your evenings belong to me." Turning again to Segawa, he says, "Coffee's on me, but time's up. On your way, young man."
"Not at all," says Segawa, his voice quiet, his calm absolutely unruffled. "I'll settle my own bill, in my own time. But thanks anyway."
"An attitude like that can get you hurt, you know."
"It hasn't so far."
***
"You're late," says my mother, before I have even got the key out of the lock.
"You didn't have to wait up for me."
"You know I can't sleep – "
"Well you'd better learn, mother! I am twenty-seven years old, old enough to – "
"You said you were working."
"Well?"
"It's thirteen minutes past two!"
"Yes, and I'm very tired. Goodnight, mother."
"Couldn't you have phoned? Couldn't you have – " Tears choke her. Her seamed, wrinkled, sagging face, ugly at the best of times, is positively hideous when she cries. Lately she cries often.
"I'm sorry. I would have phoned, but I thought you might be sleeping. Would you like me to make you some hot milk?"
"But what could have kept you until – "
"Mother, you've forgotten what it's like to be young. Otherwise you'd know that there are any number of things that could have kept me. There are many, many distractions out there in the world beyond this house. Go into the kitchen and wait for me. I'll be with you in a minute."
In my room upstairs, before I know it, I am on my knees, in tears, praying: "Lord, don't let me hate this woman, don't let me hate her, she's my mother, she hasn't had an easy life, You know that, and now she's old, old and sick... O Lord, melt the hatred I feel for her, it makes me afraid, afraid of what I could do. I picture myself flinging myself at her and strangling the life out of her, I picture it, I see it as vividly as I see anything in the so-called real world, and... don't let it happen, Lord, please don't let it happen. Strike me dead first, if You can't soften the hatred in my heart. But forgive me, that's blasphemy, of course You can soften it, You can do anything..."
I change into my nightgown, wash my face, brush my teeth, and go downstairs to find my mother has already heated up the milk and is pouring it into two cups – one for her, one for me. I don't want any, but she'll be hurt if I say so – she means it as a gesture of reconciliation. All right. A cup of hot milk won't kill me.
"I couldn't sleep, so I watched the eleven o'clock news. A bomb went off in a market in Baghdad. People running, screaming, screaming... In the middle of an alley was a leg, a leg, a child's leg..."
"You shouldn't watch the news. What for? It's not as if your seeing it will change anything."
"How could that God of yours permit it? How?"
"He's not 'that God of mine,' mother. He's God. His ways are beyond my understanding."
"I could never pray to a God who permits little children to be blown to pieces. I couldn't. I simply couldn't."
"Don't then."
"But you – "
"I cope with the things I don't understand in my way, you cope with them in yours. There's really nothing more to be said on the subject."
"Well, tell me about your evening then. Tell me about all those things I've forgotten, being no longer young."
"After work I went to see Father Kramer. He introduced me to one of his... his acolytes, I guess you'd call him... and we went out for coffee."
"You drank coffee until 2 a.m.?"
"No. We didn't drink coffee until 2 a.m."
"It's none of my business, of course..."
"Mother, supposing I tell you... that I witnessed a miracle tonight, an actual miracle. Would you believe me? Or will you think I've gone soft in the head?"
"None of the miracles I've heard about stand up to scrutiny."
"Father Kramer says life itself is a miracle. Our very existence is a miracle."
"If he's still saying that when he's my age, I'll be impressed."
"Mother..." I have a sudden idea. "Mother, will you let me introduce you to someone?"
"Who? Father Kramer?"
"No. Someone else. It's just possible meeting him will make a difference in your life."
***
What made me blurt that out? Stupid, stupid! Now I'll have to follow through, invite Segawa over for dinner or something. Or maybe if I say nothing further mother will forget about it, or pretend she's forgotten. She's not crazy about company. Lately she keeps even her close friends at a distance – the friends she was once close to, I mean. My mother in her old age is turning inward. So it should be easy to wriggle out of this little corner I've painted myself into.
That's reassuring, but I still can't sleep. What time is it? Four seventeen, says the alarm clock at the head of my bed. And I have to be up at seven. Maybe I'll call in sick today. It won't be a lie. I am sick. My eyes are burning, my head is fogged. Am I feverish? I feel my forehead. Yes, maybe I do have a fever.
The next thing I am aware of is the buzzing of the alarm. Did I sleep? I must have, and yet I have no memory of drifting off, or of dreaming. The last thing I remember is touching my forehead to see if I have a fever. But the clock says seven, and morning sunlight streams in through the paper shoji screen. My sleep, such as it was, didn't refresh me exactly, and yet I don't feel tired either. "Oh, to disappear, to disappear, to disappear!" The words sound in my brain until the repetition renders them meaningless, mere noise. I slide open the shoji and look out into the garden, at my mother's tulips and the various other flowers she's planted. It's strange. People who love flowers are usually happy. Especially if they're as good at growing them as my mother is. I personally am indifferent to flowers. I don't even know the names of most of the ones my mother raises. Anyway, that general rule, if it is one, obviously doesn't apply to her. So why does she bother? Habit?
***
This canal of ours, now the core of the tourist area, is a prettified version of what a hundred years or so ago was a real port, a major one, the hub of Japan's grain trade with Europe and Russia. Back then, they say, the sea was so thick with herring you could practically scoop them out with your hands. Then spawning patterns changed and the fish disappeared. Commerce-wise, the ports at Yokohama and Kobe grew, and Otaru's shriveled. (I know all this because I wrote the pamphlet that tourists pick up at the Tourist Information Center.) In the 1940s and '50s the canal was filthy, littered with the hulks of abandoned ships. I've seen pictures of it. During my childhood there was an epic struggle between those who wanted to fill it in and make a road, and those who wanted it preserved as a historical monument. My mother was an active campaigner among the preservationists. She attended rallies, made speeches. It went on for years. In the end there was a kind of compromise – part of it was filled in, part of it preserved and gentrified.
It's a nice place, even if a bit lacking in what might be called authenticity. I like to stroll along it early in the morning, before work, before the tourists invade, watching the fishing boats bob up and down and taunting myself with impossible dreams of maybe just helping myself to a boat and sailing away. Imagine: I grew up in a port city, a fishing city, and yet I've never ever been on a boat; I don't know how to sail, or how to fish, or even how to swim. The price one pays, I guess, for growing up without a father. Mine left when I was two. We never heard from him again.
I look at my watch: 9:30. If I'm going to work I should start heading that way now. If not, I'd better call. I reach into my handbag for my cell phone, but can't quite make up my mind to dial the number. Not that Okada-san would make a big deal of it. He's very understanding that way. He's not an old man, only in his forties, but his hair went prematurely white and he makes a great show of treating the younger staff as his grandchildren.
What will Mayumi think when she sees my empty desk? That my "Yuri Kawai" adventure got me into precisely the sort of trouble she foresaw; that my imprudence got me raped and murdered; she'll rush down to the canal at lunchtime, expecting to find my nude battered body floating in it. Or she'll ask Okada-san if he's heard from me, and he'll tell her I called in sick, which will hardly reassure her.
Strange, these seagulls. They seem unusually excited – unusually numerous too - as they wheel overhead, squawking, screeching... What's on their minds? The crows too. So many of them! And other birds. I don't know much about birds – their names, habits, breeding patterns. It never really occurred to me before to be curious about them. They go their way, I go mine. But this morning I sense a kind of malevolence in their cries and their restless hovering. There's one kind of bird whose chirping sounds like, "Over there down the road! Over there down the road! Over there down the road!"
Segawa. Wasn't he magnificent last night? The way he faced my boyfriend – neither brave nor cowardly, neither defensive nor aggressive, just... calm, natural – until my boyfriend... what's the expression I'm looking for?... Until my boyfriend was disarmed. I was sure there'd be a fight, and I have seen what my boyfriend is capable of in that regard: once in a bar a guy was coming on to me in an unpleasantly persistent way, and my boyfriend just wasted him, as the Americans say. He's got fists like greased lightning. At one time he thought of being a pro lightweight boxer, and probably could have made his mark; he just didn't have the discipline, that was his trouble. Anyway, I shudder to think what he could have done to poor Segawa, if it had come to that – Segawa, by the look of him, has never been in a fight in his life; it would have been horrifying, ghastly, and yet he showed not the faintest sign of being afraid, or even of being aware that he was in danger. It was uncanny. What accounts for it? What quality does he possess that saw him through? Is this what's meant by Christian meekness?
The beep of a horn jolts me out of my reverie. It's my boyfriend, in his Takyubin truck. He leans over, flings open the passenger door, pats the seat beside him. "Get in," he says.
I do. He sets the truck in motion even before I've closed the door. The radio's on. A woman whose voice is a high-pitched squeal is delivering a weather report. It is going to be hot-hot-hot! she says, as though relishing the prospect – not so much of heat but of being a witness to living meteorological history.
"Take the day off," says my boyfriend. "We'll drive to the beach and swim naked in the sea."
"I can't swim."
"You'll drown and I'll rescue you. I'm a qualified lifeguard, you know."
"You're gonna drive to the beach in this?"
"Would that embarrass you?"
"No, but it might get you fired."
"Let me worry about that. Call your office, tell 'em you're sick."
"I can't, I have – "
"Piles and piles and piles of work, I know, and the city would crumble into dust if you didn't dig in your heels and pull up your socks. Seriously, you don't look well."
"I didn't sleep."
"No? Not even after you got home?"
"My mother was up. I made her hot milk..."
"Let's get married, Emi. We'll make a baby who'll grow up and make us hot milk when we're old and can't sleep. It's a pretty picture, don't you think?"
"Drive me to work, Yu. Really, I have to – "
"That Segawa character. I wonder if he knows how lucky he is. I mean, I wonder if he realizes how... how thin the line is between life and death. A man like him blunders into an encounter with a man like me, and... seriously, now. One blow, one blow is all it would take. That's how fragile the thread is that binds us to life."
"What's your point, Yu? What are you trying to say?"
"Nothing, just... I wonder if he realizes, that's all."
***
He drops me off at City Hall and drives off without a word. I climb the steps and stand at the door, unable somehow to bring myself to open it and step once and for all into the working part of the day. It is a grand and imposing building, more worthy of a national parliament than of a backwater municipal office. It should give those of us who work there grand ideas, but it doesn't; if anything it has the opposite effect. It shrivels us, makes us narrow, conventional. Before I'm aware of what I'm doing I've taken my cell phone out of my bag and am inputting the number. I recognize the voice of the woman who answers, an elderly woman "grown grim in the service of her city," as Mayumi likes to say. She has a good heart for all that. "Seki-san, it's Emi. I'm not feeling well, I have a fever, I've tried but I just can't drag myself out of bed. Would you mind telling Okada-san?"
***
From Otaru Station, there are only two places to go – east to Sapporo, or west to Yoichi. My momentary sense of freedom evaporates. At Sapporo of course you can take a train to anywhere in Hokkaido, but... I remember in Europe, the States, Canada, the sense you have of having a whole continent, the whole world, at your feet; you can walk into a station not having any particular destination in mind, board a train for you hardly know (or care) where, and wake up hours later in a totally strange, totally unknown place, having no business or no acquaintances there, maybe not even speaking the language... What made me come back to Japan? It's so narrow here, so cramped, so confined. It's like a straitjacket, this country. Why didn't I stay abroad? Was I so homesick? Yes, oddly enough I was. I missed my mother, my boyfriend. It's incomprehensible to me now, but true all the same. I went abroad for the first time when I was sixteen. It was my mother's idea. This is years ago, of course; both she and I were different people then; she worried that I was becoming too attached to her and decided to foster my independence by enrolling me in a high school in Montreal. My mother went with me as far as Tokyo. I'll never forget our farewell scene at the departure lounge at Narita Airport. I cried and cried. "I don't want to go! Take me home!" My mother cried too, but there was no going back on arrangements that had been difficult enough to make. "Come, you're not a baby anymore!" sobbed my mother.
Despite that ominous beginning, my year in Montreal was wonderful. I found I had a flair for languages. I learned English, French, even a bit of Yiddish, my host family being Jewish. I made friends, partied, lost my virginity, sampled this drug and that. The school year ended, summer came, and instead of going back to Japan as I was supposed to, I spent a month hitch-hiking, at first with two friends, later all alone; I got as far as Vancouver and would have turned south, or north – what difference did it make? - but my mother's patience was at an end; she began to fear her experiment had been too successful, that I had become too independent; she refused to send me any more money and insisted I come home immediately.
I did, but couldn't settle down. I went to university, dropped out, got a job, quit, went back to school, became interested in ancient Greek drama, then in the ancient Greeks generally. I read Aeschylus, Sophocles, Plato. I quit school again, got another job, saved up some money – and went to Greece. I picked oranges, picked olives...
"Emi-chan!"
"Father Kramer! What – " I break off, sensing the stupidity of the question. He lives in Zenibako, halfway between Otaru and Sapporo; he takes the train to Otaru every morning. What he's doing here is obvious; the real question is, what am I doing here? He asks it, in a slightly different form: "You're not working today?"
"No, I – I took the day off."
"Where are you going?"
"Where? I – I... I don't know."
"I'm on my way to visit some people who might interest you. Why not come along, if you've nothing better to do?"
"I... thank you, Father, but just now I think... I think I'd rather be alone. Is that all right?"
"'Alone, alone, all, all alone,/ Alone on a wide wide sea!' Are you sure?"
"No! I'm not sure of anything!"
"Of course not. Only fools are. Come."
"Who said that, Father? Those lines you just quoted."
"Coleridge."
"Of course. The Ancient Mariner. I remember. I studied it in high school. I was thinking about high school just now..."
"These people I'm going to see. They're a family – an extended family – of Kurds from Turkey. They've applied for refugee status, but the Japanese government seems determined to deport them, despite a very strong likelihood they'll be arrested and tortured. The father is active in Kurdish nationalist circles... I bring what comfort I can, though obviously it's not much. Why is Japan so... so inhospitable? All developed countries take in refugees – why not Japan? True, they're here illegally in the sense that they've overstayed their visa. People on the run can't always stick to the letter of the law. Other than that, they're model citizens, hard-working, tax-paying... They all speak Japanese. The youngest child, a girl of six, was born here and speaks no other language. Come along, I'm sure they'll be pleased to meet you."
"No, Father, forgive me, but... you see, the reason I'm not at work today is that I called in sick, and I really am feverish. The fact is, I'm not even altogether sure how I came to be at the station. I was going home..."
"Good God!" Father Kramer touches my forehead. "You're burning! Let's get a taxi, I'll see you home..."
"Please, don't trouble. I'll take a taxi myself. People are waiting for you. How I wish I were like you, able to do some good in the world..."
"We can all do good in the world. But we'll talk about that another time. Go. Are you sure you can manage on your own?"
"Of course."
"Let me at least see you into a taxi."
"There's a whole fleet of them just outside the station. I'll be fine, really. Thank you, Father. Thank you for everything."
***
My mother is in the garden, scarcely visible under her vast straw sunhat, ministering to her flowers. She grows vegetables too – beans, potatoes, pumpkin, probably other things too; I've forgotten. All summer long our salads come straight from her garden. She looks up in surprise as the taxi pulls up and I get out. "What are you doing here?" she says.
"I'm not feeling well, I have a fever, I'll go straight to bed and to sleep, if you don't mind."
"If you kept regular hours instead of – "
"Later, mother, later! You can lecture me later; for now, just... pretend I'm not here, ok?"
"Take two Bufferins, they'll bring the fever down."
"Yes, all right."
"And Emi..."
"What?"
"I'm sorry if I seem to you a fussy old woman..."
"Good night, mother."
"Do you need any help?"
"No."
***
There are no curtains in my room, only the shoji screen, which barely dims the daylight. Somewhat unsteadily, I get out of my clothes and into my pajamas, and crawl into my futon. I close my eyes, and everything seems to go not dark but red. I am in a burning desert, the sun beating down on me, my throat parched. Sand, sand everywhere. I've never been in a desert – why should this feverish vision of one be so real? Bufferin – yes, mother was right, I should have taken a pill, I should... no, I can't... I can't bear the thought of getting up. Suddenly I'm shivering. Before I was hot, now I'm cold. I pull the quilt up over my head. Now it is night in the desert, and strange beasts are baying. I hear them... howling, groaning... Why did God give the beasts voices and yet deprive them of intelligible speech? Nightmarish, nightmarish howling...
I wonder what Segawa is doing right now, right this minute. He's probably at school, dutifully attending a lecture he's not interested in. Is he thinking of me? I gave him my cell phone number; he said he'd call, but didn't say when. He attends business school to please his parents. It's not selfishness on their part; they want the best for their only son, and they think business is it. They have no idea – they don't even know that he's a Christian, let alone that he intends one day to go to Africa or India and dedicate his life to serving the poorest of the poor, "the wretched of the earth" – who said that, "the wretched of the earth?" It's from a poem, I think. "Alone, alone, all, all alone..." No, not that poem. One day Segawa will sit his parents down, he said, and tell them the truth, but he shrinks from it; it will be a dreadful shock to them. I reminded him of Jesus' words about forsaking one's parents to follow Him. I spoke lightly, but Segawa did not smile; he only nodded and looked thoughtful. Yes, he is preparing a great work. A great destiny is in preparation for Segawa. You can see it in his face, his eyes. Do I love him? Am I in love with him? Is it possible? Supposing he asks me to marry him – to marry him and follow him to India or Africa, to minister to the poor, the sick... My God! I think that because I've bummed around Europe a bit I know life! What a joke! I know nothing, nothing, nothing! Yes, I will follow him! Yes! Without an instant's hesitation, I will follow him! Why, why doesn't he call? He's sitting in some dreary lecture hall, listening to some dreary professor drone on about interest rates, investment maximization; doesn't he know, doesn't he feel what's going on in my soul at this very moment? How can he not know, he being the cause of it?
Howling, moaning, groaning beasts! The desert night is freezing, freezing, as cold as the day is hot! I am exhausted but must keep walking; if I stop to rest and fall asleep I'll freeze to death.
***
"What are you doing? What are you doing?" Mother is frantic. I wake up but am not in bed, I am... Mother is tugging at me, pulling me. "Are you mad?"
"Where are we?"
A dog is whimpering; it lies at my feet; its brown coat is all bloody; its whimpering is pitiful. Mother slaps my face, slaps me again. "You bitch, you... you demon!" She bends over the dog. I am sobbing, sobbing... My mother has never, ever hit me before. "Go home and call the police. Hurry!"
"What... what shall I tell them?"
She rises upright and glares at me. "Tell them the truth! That you carried this boulder from our garden and bashed a helpless, defenseless dog with it!"
Yes, there's the rock, and it really is almost big enough to be called a boulder. Did I carry it?
"Go! Maybe it can still be saved. And what will we say to Kato-san when he comes home? Well? What will we say to him?"
"We'll say..." I master my sobbing, master my daze, and face my mother. "We'll say that the groaning of that wretched beast of his drove me insane! Every day, day after day, night after night, that awful, ghostly, unearthly moaning! We'll say that I gave it something to moan about!"
"You're inhuman! If you won't call the police, I will!"
"Go ahead."
"Get into the house, quickly! Standing around in the street in her pajamas and bare feet... with a fever, yet! Go!"
Nausea, dizziness... "Mother, I'm going to be sick."
Somehow she gets me back into the house and into my futon. "Did you take two Bufferins, like I told you?"
"No."
"All right, wait, I'll be right back."
I close my eyes. Years pass, decades. Then mother comes back. "Here." She hands me the pills and a glass of water, and helps me sit up. I swallow the pills, sip the water. She pushes me gently back on the pillow, and lays a cool washcloth on my forehead. "Thank you mother, that's... that's wonderful..."