Go

by Kazuki Kaneshiro

  When I got home, I found my mother playing chess with my father in the living room. She’d come home.

  “Were you out on a date?” my mother asked, advancing her queen. “Check.”

  My father said, “I’m in trouble,” but he seemed to be in awfully high spirits thanks to my mother’s return.

  “No comment,” I answered.

  “Just don’t do anything irresponsible,” said my mother.

  “I know.”

  My father looked up from the chessboard. He was smiling, his eyes sparkling like those of a kid on the first day of summer vacation. “I can’t win,” he said to me. “There’s no way out. She’s just too good.”

  I knew he’d been lonely, but this was pathetic.

  After I completed my daily routine, I listened to Us Three. It was really cool. I listened to it three times all the way through before falling asleep.

  The next day, Kato, whom I hadn’t seen since his birthday party, showed up at my classroom during lunch period.

  “Heyyy, lover boy,” he said, sitting in the seat next to me.

  “Jeez, what happened to your face?” I asked.

  Kato’s face was darker, like he had a tan.

  “My father gave me a trip to Guam for my birthday. It was awesome.”

  “What a blessed life you lead,” I said sarcastically.

  “So,” Kato began, a smirk plastered on his face. “Did you do it yet?”

  “You asking me to rearrange your nose again?”

  Kato put a hand to his nose and snapped into a defensive position. “Come on. Give me a break.”

  “Do you even know who she is?” I asked.

  His hand still on his nose, Kato shook his head.

  “I was curious, so after you two left the party, I asked around, but no one knew who she was. So you can relax. If no one in my crew knows who she is, that has to mean she’s a proper girl. How did you meet up with a cute girl like that anyway?”

  “I’m not exactly sure. She’s pretty mysterious. She just suddenly appeared and pulled me into her world.”

  Kato lowered his hand from his nose and said with a straight face, “Maybe she’s a snow spirit. Or a crane you once saved coming back to repay the debt in human form, like in the folktale.”

  “The inside of your head must’ve dried up from being out in the sun too long.”

  “Hey, I was born this way,” Kato said. “If you’re curious, I can do some digging for you. She’s in high school, right? If I know where she goes, I can pretty much find out anything through my connections.”

  I wavered for a moment and shook my head. “Nah. Whoever she is, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Kato said, looking happy for some reason. “This all sounds like a lot of fun, like something out of the movies.”

  “So long as it doesn’t turn out to be a mystery or a suspense thriller.”

  The bell chimed the end of lunch period. Kato rose from his seat.

  “As an objective viewer, I’d prefer seeing a horror or occult film. It’d be exciting to see your wiener get lopped off or something.” Kato patted me on the shoulder. “Best of luck.”

  Calling Sakurai every Monday night became part of my weekly routine. Sometime after the Golden Week holidays, calling Sakurai became a part of my daily routine.

  We spent most of our days off together. As we continued to see each other, a certain understanding grew between us. We each had to find cool things the other would like.

  We recommended all kinds of books, CDs, and movies to each other and classified them simply according to whether they were cool or uncool.

  Sakurai tended to rate most of the things I recommended as cool. Bruce Springsteen, Lou Reed, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy . . . but Neil Young just wasn’t her cup of tea. I asked her why.

  “He’s not a good singer.”

  I thought most of the things Sakurai recommended to me were cool. Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson, Cecil Taylor, Dexter Gordon, Milt Jackson, Ella Fitzgerald, Mozart, Richard Strauss, Debussy . . . but John Coltrane just wasn’t my cup of tea. She asked me why.

  “Too dark.”

  My recommendation of Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury became one of her favorites. I wound up taking a lot of roundhouse kicks in the leg thanks to that movie. Sakurai’s recommendation of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest became one of my favorites. After I told her so, I got stuck having to watch more than my fill of Jack Nicholson films. Sakurai really liked Jack Nicholson. I asked her why.

  “He’s strange and cool.”

  Sakurai was strange and cool, too.

  Books were a pretty weak field for me. Because I hardly read any novels and only read dense books about anthropology, archaeology, biology, history, and philosophy, it was hard to recommend a book that anyone else would find interesting. The novels I’d read based on Jeong-il’s recommendation were generally old Japanese novels that Sakurai had already read. Sakurai had been influenced by her book-loving father. She’d read a lot of books.

  I read all kinds of novels that Sakurai recommended to me. John Irving, Stephen King, and Ray Bradbury became some of my favorite novelists. But I especially liked James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice and Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye. When I told Sakurai so, she said proudly, “I knew you’d like them.”

  There were also things that we “excavated” together. Dashiell Hammett, Sillitoe, Jack Finney, Raymond Carver, Chariots of Fire, Purple Noon, The Trouble with Harry, Days of Wine and Roses, The Wild Bunch, Elvis Costello, R.E.M., T. Rex, Donny Hathaway, the Kronos Quartet, Henryk Górecki, Terence Blanchard, Egon Schiele, Andrew Wyeth, J. M. W Turner, Roy Lichtenstein . . .

  This excavation work was incredibly fun. Our method was simple: walk into a bookstore or CD shop or video rental store together and go with our gut instinct. That was it. We looked at the book cover or CD jacket or video cover art and chose whatever “spoke” to us. But our gut instinct turned out to be your basic .300 hitter. There were strikeouts and lots of easy grounders and fly outs, not to mention lots of time and money wasted. The excavation work was fun anyway.

  On the first Sunday of June, we were in a fast-food chain in Ginza when Sakurai asked out of the blue, “Do you want to come back to my house now?”

  I didn’t know how to answer, so Sakurai added, “We have a media room because of my father’s many hobbies. We can listen to music and watch movies together there. That way, we can talk about what we thought right after.”

  “Won’t your father mind if you bring a guy home?”

  “My family is completely cool about stuff like that,” said Sakurai, giving me a tight-lipped smile. “My older sister is always bringing home her boyfriends for dinner.”

  Sakurai was looking at me with serious eyes.

  I nodded. “Yeah, okay.”

  Sakurai let out a sigh of relief. “I didn’t know what I’d do if you said no.”

  Sakurai’s house was in an upscale residential area in Setagaya.

  Sakurai’s father had a tuft of hair parted in the middle. He was wearing an expensive-looking denim shirt and nicely faded jeans. He looked at his daughter’s male friend without batting an eye, smiled gracefully, and said, “Welcome.”

  I was shown into the living room and took a seat on the cushy sofa. The mother, with the same look of refinement as Sakurai, appeared with a tray. As she set cups of tea on the table, she said, “Welcome. Please look after our daughter,” and excused herself from the living room.

  “Where do you go to school, Sugihara-kun?” the father asked.

  I told him the name of my high school, to which he said, “Hmm,” and added, “It must be a very good school.”

  I told him truthfully, “Not at all.”

  Sakurai, sitting next to her father, let out a chuckle—a tiny one, so as not to be too noticeable.

  I guess Sakurai’s father loved to talk. For a while, he talked my ear off
about a lot of different things. He was a graduate of Tokyo University. He was involved in the student protest movement in the late sixties. He was a salaryman at a famous trading company. He really loved jazz. He called black people “African Americans.” He called Indians “Native Americans.” He hated Japan.

  “Do you like this country, Sugihara-kun?” he asked, as soon as Sakurai left to use the bathroom. I didn’t know how to answer, and he continued. “I have flown around the world on business, and I’ve never seen a more unprincipled country than this one. It’s enough to make me ashamed to call myself Japanese overseas. To express my active rejection of the Japanese government, I refuse to participate in elections. If I have time to go vote, I’d rather spend that time with my family. Doing so will ultimately make Japan—”

  “Are you”—I cut in—“familiar with the meaning of the name Japan?”

  The father, with a deflated look, gave some thought to my question and answered, “It’s the land of the rising, isn’t it?”

  “That’s one theory, but apparently there are lots of others. The theory that hi no moto, or the sun’s origin, which is a common epithet for Yamato, eventually turned into the country’s name is one example. Scholars are still debating over it. One book that I read recently said that Japan is a rare country whose citizens grow up knowing nothing about how their country’s name was derived because it’s completely overlooked in history education.”

  I was babbling.

  Sakurai’s father stared at me with a look that seemed to ask, So? Suddenly, I was hit with a feeling of futility. What am I doing here? And then the answer came into view. Sakurai returned from the bathroom and, without sitting down again, told her father, “I think it’s time to give Sugihara some space.”

  As we left and headed for the media room, Sakurai asked in a low voice, “Too annoying?”

  Shaking my head, I told her, “Not at all.” It was the first lie I ever told her.

  The media room was in the basement, a ten-tatami room with finely grained wood flooring. It was equipped with a very expensive-looking stereo and speakers and a projector and a giant screen. Hundreds of CDs, LPs, and DVDs lined the built-in shelves along the walls. Taking up the center of the room was the same sofa as the one in the living room.

  Sakurai put Mozart’s Symphony No. 25 in the CD cradle and sat on the sofa. She saw me staring at the words on the spine of the CD case and said, “Come over here,” while patting the cushion next to her. I sat down on the sofa, leaving a small space between us. Sakurai picked up the remote and turned on the CD player. The symphony blared from the speakers.

  After some time passed, Sakurai tapped me on the shoulder. Her mouth was opening and closing. But I couldn’t hear her. At first, I thought I couldn’t hear because of the deafening music, but quickly realized that she wasn’t making a sound on purpose. Her mouth kept repeating the same movements. Watching her lips go from one shape to the next, I could hear the three words in my head. I. Like. You. I reached out and put my hand on the nape of her neck. Her lips stopped moving. I tensed my hand behind her neck and pulled her toward me. We must’ve kissed for about ten minutes. We didn’t unlock lips once until the symphony’s first movement ended.

  When we came out of the media room, dinner was waiting upstairs. Before I could protest, I was seated at the table. Sakurai’s older sister was there, too. She was giving me a serious once-over, ignoring all pretense of restraint.

  “Itadakimasu.” Let’s eat.

  Dinner began. It occurred to me that this was my first time eating with a Japanese family. After this realization, I became so nervous that the chopsticks felt a little heavy in my hand. Sakurai, maybe thinking I was nervous for a different reason, brought up all sorts of cheerful topics to try to ease the tension and filled the dinner table with laughter.

  Sakurai’s parents and older sister were really friendly people. I laughed a lot at their stories and occasionally joined in the conversation. Before I knew it, I even found my appetite.

  Noticing Sakurai’s father filling his glass a couple of times with iced tea, I asked, “Do you not drink?”

  “None of us here can drink alcohol.” Sakurai answered instead. “Even a sip will knock us out cold.”

  “Do you drink much, Sugihara-kun?” Sakurai’s sister asked, smiling meaningfully.

  “I’m still underage.” I answered with a serious face, which prompted a short laugh. “Apparently people with innately low alcohol tolerance exist only in the Mongoloid race.”

  Everyone in the family nodded with mild interest. I was going to explain why but decided against it.

  “What’s the difference between someone who can drink and someone who can’t?” Sakurai asked.

  “When you consume alcohol, a toxic compound called acetaldehyde is created and makes you feel drunk. Someone with a high tolerance doesn’t get drunk because the ALDH2 enzymes in their body work to break down the acetaldehyde. But not in someone with low tolerance. Their ALDH2 enzymes don’t.”

  After listening to my explanation, Sakurai’s father nodded his satisfaction and said, “Like I said, you must go to a very good high school.”

  Sakurai and her older sister chuckled quietly to themselves. I guess Sakurai had talked to her sister about me.

  When we were ready to leave the house, Sakurai’s father saw us off at the door and said, “You’re welcome anytime.”

  Sakurai seemed happy the whole time we walked back to the train station. When we stopped at the ticket barrier to say goodbye, she said, “I think my father liked you.”

  I nodded vaguely. Looking down a bit, she said, “My father isn’t exactly stylish but he’s not a bad guy. He’s really sweet and understanding.”

  I playfully feigned a punch, just touching Sakurai’s left cheek. She raised her head and looked at me.

  “I’m really glad if your father liked me,” I said.

  “Really?”

  I gave her a firm nod. Sakurai let out a relieved sigh and smiled bashfully.

  “So I noticed your family didn’t call you by your name.”

  Sakurai said cheerfully, “That’s because I warned them not to.”

  “It’d be nice to know eventually,” I said.

  “Mysterious, isn’t it?” Sakurai narrowed her eyes into that challenging look of hers. “I guess I’ll tell you eventually.”

  Ever since that first visit to Sakurai’s house, most of our dates took place there. Sakurai and I spent a lot of time in the media room.

  Once we spent the whole day watching all three movies in the Godfather series. The Godfather trilogy meant a lot to me. In the opening of The Godfather: Part II, the scene with young Vito Corleone arriving on Ellis Island and looking at the Statue of Liberty has got to be the most beautiful scene I have ever seen in movies.

  I’d become convinced that as long as there are immigrants and refugees in this world, the Godfather movies will live on. When I stressed this to Sakurai, she said, smiling, “I don’t know if I understand completely, but I know that you really love The Godfather, Sugihara.”

  Another time we listened to a bunch of Miles Davis recordings. Sakurai lectured me about the importance of Miles Davis in jazz history. While we listened to Miles’s greatest recordings, from bebop and cool to hard bop, modal, and funk, in that order, she gave me a detailed explanation. She ended her lecture with, “Miles is jazz.” I pulled her close and kissed her.

  Other times, we spent the entire day caressing each other. We touched and kissed each other gently while our favorite music played. But we didn’t touch each other down there. We had a silent understanding that this wasn’t the place we were going to give ourselves completely to each other. We were both fearful that if we went too far, our desires would get the better of us, and we might violate that understanding.

  I kissed the nape of Sakurai’s neck while gently caressing her back. Sakurai preferred being kissed on the nape of the neck rather than on her breasts. When I ran my fingers over the curves of h
er back, she’d let out a deep and heavy breath. Then she’d whisper into my ear repeatedly: “You’re amazing.”

  Sakurai liked to kiss my muscles. Her favorites were my biceps, deltoids, and abdominals. Sometimes, she’d bite down on my biceps and growl. Sakurai always planted a kiss on every square of my six-pack.

  The first time we took off our tops, there was an odd moment when we’d finished caressing each other. Maybe embarrassed by having to put our clothes back on, we got dressed in silence. A Brahms piano concerto was playing. I finished dressing first, so I asked a question to fill the awkward silence.

  “I wonder what country Brahms was from.”

  Sakurai stopped for a moment after fastening her bra and said, “I’m not sure. But I don’t think it really matters where he’s from. People all over the world appreciate Brahms.”

  I went up to Sakurai and leaned my body against her, gently pushing her down on the sofa. I rested my head on her chest, with my right ear down. The sound of music died, and I could only hear Sakurai’s heartbeat. Sakurai’s heart didn’t beat at the same steady pace, but was always changing. She gently patted the top of my head and kissed it three times.

  It was a ritual we went through after we had finished caressing each other. I would listen to Sakurai’s heartbeat, and she would kiss the top of my head three times. Then we would leave the media room, reluctantly.

  Sakurai and I wanted every bit of each other. There was no mistaking it. But the place where we were going to give ourselves completely to each other had to be special. We concluded that we would go somewhere with a beautiful view of the ocean. And that going there with our parents’ money wouldn’t be cool. We were going to go someplace special with money we’d made ourselves and give ourselves to each other. Where that place was or how much money we’d need to get there, neither of us had any idea. We decided to get started anyway. Summer vacation was coming up. We decided to cut back on seeing each other and put our energies into part-time work.