Penguin Highway

by Tomihiko Morimi

  “I always feel a little anxious after getting my hair cut,” she said.

  “My hair is too prone to tantrums, so it’s better to cut it. I feel much smarter now.”

  “Good lord. How much smarter do you need to be?”

  “As smart as humanly possible.”

  To demonstrate how I was smarter today than I was yesterday, I explained the causes of the rainy season to the lady. She said, “Hmm. Still, I’m getting sick of all the rain.”

  She twirled the spaghetti around her fork, yawning.

  “Are you sleepy?”

  “I was really feeling out of it yesterday. Didn’t even make it to church.”

  “If I don’t go to school, I get scolded. Does that happen if you don’t go to church?”

  “Nothing like that, no. I go to church because I want to.”

  “Do you believe in God?”

  “Good question.” She cocked her head. “That’s a mystery.”

  After lunch, she took out the chessboard from the top of the bookshelf. Her real chessboard was still at Seaside Café. The one in her apartment was an astonishingly small portable set. This one was only the size of a handkerchief, and the pieces were the size of peas. “You’re getting way better, so I gotta practice,” she said.

  “I’m playing chess every day at school. Hamamoto is extremely good at it.”

  “Oh?”

  “She even knows about the theory of relativity.”

  “Wow. Are you in love?”

  “I am not in love with anyone.”

  “You sure about that?”

  I sat on the floor with the lady, and we played chess. The lady opened the sliding door to the veranda, so a warm, wet wind blew in, making the white lace curtains sway. The wind wasn’t strong. The lady scowled at the chessboard intently at first, but she started nodding off soon. Eventually, I had to wake her up every time it was her turn. When we played chess at Seaside Café, I always got sleepy, but today it was her turn.

  “You’re very sleepy,” I said.

  “I’m not.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Am not!”

  She rolled over, lying on her back. The feeble light from the cloudy sky played across her pale face. I knelt beside the chessboard, watching her expression. She opened her big eyes, trying to look up at me. She blinked several times. For a moment, she looked like she was my age, which was astonishing.

  In a dreamy voice, she asked, “What time did you go to bed last night?”

  “I always go to bed at nine.”

  “Right. You don’t know what the middle of the night is like.”

  “Is it amazing?”

  “It is. Everyone’s asleep; the whole town’s dark. It’s an adventure.”

  “I’ll have to do some training so I can be awake at night.”

  “No point in training for that. Being up at night is just lonely.”

  “I’ll play chess with you until you get sleepy.”

  “That’s enough out of you. Get your sleep, kiddo!”

  From time to time, she closed her eyes. I was worried she was asleep, but her eyes always snapped back open like my sister’s French doll.

  “Did you make anything after our last experiment?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I’ve got a hypothesis. I think you should try making things other than penguins. That might make you feel better. Like when you made the bats at Seaside Café.”

  “I don’t wanna make anything but penguins.”

  “Why not?”

  “I get bad dreams.”

  “Jabberwock dreams?”

  “Close enough,” she whispered. Then she turned her head and looked at the gray sky outside. “If I don’t feel better, your penguin research can’t progress, hmm?”

  “I think you should go to sleep if you’re sleepy,” I said. “Bonne nuit.”

  “It’s still day!” she said, laughing. I guess she knew French.

  Then she actually did fall asleep.

  All I could hear was the rain falling outside the veranda and the sound of the lady’s breathing.

  Her eyes and lips were closed, and she was sound asleep. She didn’t talk in her sleep like my sister did.

  As I observed her face, I found myself wondering how her face came to be the shape it was, who decided these things. Of course, I knew that genes decided what our faces look like. But that wasn’t what I really wanted to know. Why did I enjoy staring at her face this much? And how had genes managed to make the face I enjoyed watching so utterly perfect? That’s what I wanted to know.

  I tried writing about this mystery in my notebook, but I’d never written anything like this in my notes before, so I wasn’t able to find the words for it. I ended up just writing The lady’s face, happiness, genes, perfection. Then I wrote about the ingredients in the lady’s spaghetti and how extremely delicious it was. Then I wrote how we’d made the salad like pros, starting with the dressing and then mixing in the veggies.

  When I finished writing, the lady was still asleep.

  It occurred to me that if she got chilly, she might catch a cold, so I got a towel from her bed and draped it over her. I believe this was the correct decision. If she often sleeps on the floor like this, then she definitely needs somebody to come put a towel on her, I thought.

  Grown-up women didn’t let grown-up men into their apartments often. And they’d never fall asleep in front of them. That only happened if they were a couple. But the lady let me in her apartment and fell asleep in front of me. This was because I was only a child.

  There was something sad about the sight of someone asleep in the middle of the day. I felt sorry for the lady not being able to sleep at night. At night, I always get so sleepy I can’t fight it off, and that often makes me sad. I often hoped NASA would invent a system that would extract this unbearable sleepiness from humans. If we had a Sleep Shift System, then the lady could use my sleepiness to fall asleep at night. And then I could stay up later doing research and would definitely become an important grown-up.

  But while I was thinking about this, I must have nodded off.

  The next thing I knew, I was lying on the bed with a towel on me. The lady was sitting on the couch reading a magazine.

  “You’re up,” she said.

  “I think I should probably be getting home.”

  “Yeah… The rain’s stopped, too.”

  When I stepped outside, I said good-bye and added, “Sorry the research isn’t getting anywhere.”

  “No need to get all dejected about it,” she said, grinning. “You’re a child of science, right?”

  “Even children of science get dejected sometimes.”

  “Don’t try to rush it. Major discoveries take time.”

  I left the apartment building and found the sky above the hill was an unusual color. There were fluffy clouds covering the sky, and they were all painted a pale pink. I’d never seen the sky look like this before. There was a gap in the clouds beyond the mountains, and the light of sunset was shining through.

  I turned back and saw the lady waving from her veranda.

  She was pink, too.

  The Sea was a problem that would flummox scientists the world over.

  We had no idea what kept The Sea aloft. It appeared to be a large mass of blue water, but the surface of it remained constantly active. It got larger and smaller, like it was breathing. Sometimes several white swirls would appear on it, like miniature typhoons. Antenna-like structures would jut out of it sometimes. The more we observed it, the more it started to seem like a strange life-form.

  The fact that in all the world, only the three of us were researching a project of such significance was a source of pride for me. I even had a dream that Uchida and Hamamoto and I would all get the Nobel Prize together. The three of us would line up together and let them place the medals around our necks. We would be put in science textbooks as the researchers who discovered The Sea. My father and mother would be extremely pleased. An
d the lady would say “Well done, kiddo.”

  We had to keep this research a secret. After all, if the existence of The Sea got out, a whole swarm of researchers would come here and take the research project away from us for the simple reason that we were only children. That’s why we agreed to talk about The Sea as little as possible when we were at school. But keeping quiet when we had new ideas was extremely bothersome. There were times when we couldn’t wait and talked about them during a break. Uchida suggested that The Sea was a device created by some laboratory somewhere, I proposed a number of hypotheses related to the phenomena displayed on The Sea’s surface, and Hamamoto was thinking of ways to communicate with The Sea. We were all dedicated.

  When Hamamoto and I were whispering to each other, Suzuki made fun of us, saying “They’re in loooove!” The Suzuki Empire always insisted it was love whenever any boys talked to any girls.

  When we said nothing, Suzuki got louder. “Aoyama and Hamamoto are in love!”

  Kobayashi let out a whoop, and Hamamoto’s ears turned red.

  “Aoyama, is the exploring going well?” Suzuki said with mock politeness. “You can’t slack off just because you’re in love with Hamamoto. We’ve explored much farther than you now. We’ve explored the whole river and drawn it on the map.”

  “It was a great adventure!” Kobayashi said, nodding gravely. “We almost died for real.”

  “We aren’t slacking off. We’ve merely postponed operations until the rain stops.”

  “Getting frustrated??”

  “I’m not frustrated. We’re simply proceeding in a way that seems best to us.”

  “Hmph!” Suzuki snorted. “While you’re doing nothing, we’ll explore everything!”

  When Suzuki finally went away, Hamamoto sighed. “He’s so obnoxious,” she muttered.

  I guess he’d made her mad, because she said, “Let’s go exploring! I’m coming, too.”

  “Why are you mad?”

  “I’m not mad.”

  “Well, if you’re not mad, that’s good.”

  Hamamoto stared at me. When she did that, she always looked suddenly grown-up. I tried to imitate this, but it didn’t go well.

  “You don’t care if Suzuki gets ahead of you?”

  “Hamamoto, if Suzuki and us were like Scott and Amundsen and both trying to reach the South Pole, then we would have to hurry. But Suzuki’s party has been headed downstream toward the ocean, while we have been headed upstream toward the source. Since we’re going in opposite directions, there’s no need to panic. And I am confident that any map Suzuki makes will not be very accurate.”

  “You really don’t get frustrated.”

  “I don’t believe in getting frustrated easily.”

  “Ugh. But what if they change direction?”

  Uchida came over. “That would be bad!” he said.

  “And I want to come, too,” Hamamoto said.

  Uchida wasn’t sure about that. “But…this project is for Aoyama and me.”

  “Then The Sea is mine. Since the two of you joined later.”

  “Only because you asked us to, Hamamoto.”

  “Be fair,” Hamamoto said, sulking.

  “Hamamoto, exploring the river is dangerous. If you fell in, you might drown. I can’t really recommend it.”

  “I’ll be careful not to fall in! Even if I do, I know how to swim,” Hamamoto insisted.

  That Sunday, my father had to go to the university.

  There was a university in our town, and my father went there sometimes on Sundays. My father was a grown-up and had already graduated from college, but there were classes that people with jobs could take, too. According to my father, this university had just opened when we moved here, so all the buildings were brand-new, like a futuristic city.

  After lunch, I was getting ready to go exploring, and my father was in the living room preparing to go to the university. He was flipping through a really thick book with lots of tags in it, writing in his notebook with a fountain pen.

  “Going exploring today?” he asked.

  “We are.”

  “Watch out for cars and don’t go anywhere dangerous.”

  “Mm. I’ll be careful.”

  My father drove to the university, so I had him drop me off at the mall. I’d agreed to meet the others there so we could go exploring.

  It was an extremely hot day, as if midsummer had suddenly arrived. The sky above our neighborhood was blue like the pictures of Hawaii at the dentist’s office, and the trees along the bus route were a deep green. As our car ran down the empty bus route, I felt like we were driving on a seaside highway. As we rounded the curve near Kamonohashi Park, I felt like at any moment the sparkling sea would appear. But I’d never actually been on a seaside highway, so this was just how I imagined it would be.

  My father left me in the mall parking lot, and when I got to the food court where we’d agreed to meet, Hamamoto was sitting on a bench, looking like an impassive little robot. She had a large white hat on her knees. As though we were going on a picnic. When I said hello, she answered in a very cheerful voice.

  Uchida arrived shortly after me.

  First, we gathered at a table in the corner of the food court for a strategy meeting. I spread out the newly made map, and Hamamoto inspected it, making impressed noises.

  “This blue line is the river we were exploring. This is the vacant lot behind the school, so that’s where we started exploring.”

  “What’s the ‘ancient ruins’?”

  “A reservoir. It feels like an ancient ruin, so we named it that. If you keep following the river, it comes out in these rice paddies. If you go through the tunnel under the highway, it goes into a future residential area. That brings us to the area behind this mall.”

  “Beyond that is a mystery,” Uchida said. “We’re looking for the source.”

  “Is it not on real maps?”

  “This river is not on regular maps.”

  “Does that happen?” Hamamoto said.

  “Probably because this river is extremely small. I think the people who make those maps probably overlooked it. But that’s exactly why our mission is so important. Nobody knows where this river comes from. If we investigate and uncover the source, I’m sure the people who make maps will be pleased to find out.”

  “Hmm,” Hamamoto said. She looked serious.

  We left the mall. We went around to the back of the building, and the empty future residential area spread out before us like the desert. Hamamoto put on her white hat. When she saw the concrete ditch, she looked a little disappointed.

  “Oh. I was picturing a much bigger river, like the Amazon!”

  “There was a part of it that was like the Amazon,” Uchida said.

  “It might be like the Amazon again farther up. You can never be too careful.”

  We peered through the green fence on both sides of the river and saw quite a lot of water flowing through the concrete basin. Probably because it had rained so much. The future residential area behind the mall was extremely large, full of telephone poles and lots marked out in even squares. The sun beating down on the asphalt was very hot, but Hamamoto’s hat seemed to be keeping her comfortable.

  “It smells like crayfish,” Uchida said, peering into the river.

  Hamamoto snuck up behind him, yelled “Boo!” and pushed his back. Uchida yelped, and she cackled. Then she walked away so smoothly, it was like she was on skates. Hands clasped behind her, she said, “It’s all vacant lots!” Uchida shook his head. “I don’t get her,” he said.

  As we followed the river, we talked about The Sea. Hamamoto insisted we had to explore the inside of The Sea.

  “That sounds really dangerous,” Uchida said.

  “Of course, we can’t go inside. We have to put something else in.”

  “Send in a probe?” I said.

  “A probe!” Uchida said, delighted. “That sounds good. Like outer space.”

  We talked about that awhile longer,
walking onward. I looked back, and the mall was very small. It wavered like a mirage on the far side of a real desert. A car climbing the ramp to the rooftop parking lot gleamed in the light.

  “Exploring rivers is not much fun,” Hamamoto said.

  “Sometimes it’s fun, and sometimes it isn’t,” Uchida said. “Besides, you’re new at this.”

  We passed behind a depot with a lot of city buses parked in it. There was a two-story office and a vending machine behind the fence, too.

  The future residential area ended just past the bus depot, giving way to more rice paddies. The fence along the river stopped, and the concrete drain ran off between the paddies. By now, the rice had been planted, and there were even rows of green stalks in the water. Across the paddies to our right was the highway, with lots of large trucks and passenger cars zooming past.

  The drain ran into a culvert behind an old brown building. We took a break in the shade of the trees there. Hamamoto drank some water from a canteen, and I spread out the map and drew the river’s path on it. Uchida went to investigate the brown building and came back excited. “This is the back of the library!” he said.

  “If Suzuki sees us here, he’ll never shut up,” Hamamoto said, wiping the sweat off her brow.

  “That would be unfortunate,” I said.

  The laws of the Suzuki Empire held that boys and girls could not get along. Suzuki insisted that Hamamoto and I were in love and made fun of us for it. I thought this was very strange. First of all, this was hardly a matter worth wasting all that energy on. Didn’t he have anything better to do? Secondly, even if Suzuki were right, and Hamamoto and I were “in love,” that wasn’t a bad thing. Getting along was a good thing. I had no idea what the fuss was about. And third, Hamamoto and I were not in love. I already knew who I was going to marry. Even if Hamamoto was somehow in love with me, I would never be able to reciprocate. This was a shame.

  Our break ended, and we continued following the river.

  It ran alongside the highway for a while, between the rice paddies. A dark forest was drawing closer. There were high-tension towers on the other side of the forest. We stopped at the forest’s entrance. The drain kept going, into the woods. The shade here was cool, like we were underwater.