A Woman's Nails

by Aonghas Crowe

  God and I look at what He has created and we both agree: it is good, very good. What Aya lacks in looks, she has more compensated for: a body that would terrorize a man in his dreams. Full, beautiful, bluish white breasts, hard as boulders, with small pink nipples, like pickled cherries on rice. I kiss them, lick them, tease and fondle them. I pay obeisance to those breasts as a true believer would before any awe-inspiring manifestation of the Almighty.

  Six months have passed since Mie left me, and for the first time in all these sad, lonely days, weeks and months, during which I have wandered aimlessly like a somnambulist, I can feel life trickling again through my cold, dry veins. As I suck on Aya's tiny pink nipples and listen to her soft, meaningless protest of damé-damé, I feel as if I am finally beginning to reclaim my life, one small kiss at a time, finally starting to laying the past to rest, one nail at a time.

  4

  Remember that feeling I had of life flowing again through my veins? Well, it doesn't last very long.

  As the inbound train approaches, the off-tune chime of the railroad crossing starts clanging away, I take Aya into my arms and hold her tightly. With her face buried in my chest, she tells me she loves me.

  The words are spoken softly, nervously; they're unsure of how they'll be received. I knew this was coming. Aya had been wearing the grateful, yet forlorn look of an abandoned dog that's just been fed, the look that compels you to take the poor mutt home with you. And so, I tell her that I love her, too. The train pulls into the station, the doors open. Aya kisses me once more before boarding the train. The driver, leaning out of a small window and looking back down the platform, blows a whistle. The doors close and the rusting, sun-bleached train begins to move forward. I remain on the platform, watching the train as it ambles down the single track and takes Aya out of my life. My love for the girl is neither patient, nor kind. It is rude and self-seeking. It doesn't protect and it cannot be trusted. My love for Aya fails.

  And, as soon as the train disappears around a bend, the familiar emptiness, another one of Mie’s parting gifts, returns.

  5

  MACHIKO

  1

  On Monday morning, a man in a poorly fitting navy suit comes into the office and takes a seat near Yumi; the heavy dark clouds that usually hang over my co-worker’s head break, the sun filters in.

  Yumi chats animatedly to the man, using that gratingly high and overly delighted voice she normally reserves for the phone.

  The man goes about his business, opening what looks like a large physician's bag and taking out a narrow, but rather thick envelope which he places on the table. Yumi gives the man a slip of paper, which he examines then marks with a small stamp. He hands the slip of paper back to my co-worker who continues to rattle away cheerfully. The man then opens the envelope revealing a two-inch thick stack of cash. Holding the stack at the bottom with two hands, he flicks his wrists a number of time producing a fan of ten-thousand yen note.

  Good Lord! Whatever this man's job is, I want it!

  As much as I'd love to stay and watch the man perform his magic, I’ve got a class to teach and it’s about to start. This morning it’s a group of beginner's, made up of six housewives ranging in age from their late thirties to early fifties.

  When the oldest of the group, Mieko, asks me how I spent the weekend, it is tempting to say that it was spent lying naked on a wooly throw rug tossing about with a high school girl. I tell her, instead, that I spent Sunday studying Japanese, which produces a cackle of praise from the students. Mieko says she respects me and wishes her husband were as diligent as I was.

  The woman should be careful of what she wishes for.

  Mieko then tells me that her own weekend was horrible.

  “Really?” I say. “Why's that?”

  “Finished dinner, my husband . . .”

  “After dinner,” I correct.

  “What?”

  “After dinner,” I repeat. “Not finished dinner, after dinner.”

  “I see. I see. Thank you.” Mieko looks down at her notebook, studies what she has prepared for today's lesson, then starts over: “Finished dinner, my husband . . .” I tap the surface of my desk to convey my irritation. The message seems to get across. “Oh, I'm sorry,” she says. “After . . . After dinner, my husband . . . How do you say . . . chidori ashi?”

  It's thanks to good old Mie that I know chidori ashi, literally chicken legs, means stagger. “My husband staggered,” I answer.

  “What?”

  “Staggered.”

  Mieko says she doesn't understand.

  “Your husband, he was drunk, right? Yopparai, right?”

  “Yes, very, very yopparai,” she says, laughing.

  “Okay then, he staggered.”

  “Sutahgah . . .?”

  “Staggered.”

  “Sutahgahdo?”

  “Yes, staggered. He staggered.”

  “What does that mean?”

  I feel like a dog chasing its own tail.

  “What does that mean?” she asks again.

  “Staggered? You're husband was drunk. He staggered. Chidori ashi.”

  “Yes, yes. Chidori ashi. How do you say that in English?”

  I am this close to going losing it. “Chidori ashi means Stagger.”

  “Huh?”

  “Chidori ashi equals sutahgahdo.” This really is how they speak English here.

  “Oh, I see, I see. Thank you. Finished dinner, my husband staggered . . .”

  I am distracted by the distinctive whine of a 50cc motor. Going to the window, I look out and see the man with the cash, tooling noisily away on a cheap little scooter. When class has finished and the students have left, I ask Yumi who the guy was.

  “He’s from the bank,” she says.

  “From the bank? On that dinky little scooter? And with all that cash?”

  “Yes, today's payday.”

  “He doesn't ever get robbed?”

  “Have you got your inkan?” Yumi asks.

  “My inkan?”

  “Yes, your inkan. Have you got it?”

  I tell her I don't. The stamp engraved with my name in kanji is back at the condominium.

  “I can't pay you unless you have your inkan. I have to stamp this book.”

  “Here's a wild idea, Yumi, that I'll just throw out to you, see if you bite: How about I just sign the book.”

  “No, no, no. You must use the inkan.”

  Good grief. “Okay, I'll bring it tomorrow.”

  “What about your pay?”

  “I'll just pick it up tomorrow.”

  “But I can't keep that much cash here.”

  “Cash? We're paid in cash?”

  She says of course we are, making me feel like an idiot for asking. You can live for years in this country, study its language and culture, but you'll still be scratching your head every time you bump up against their notion of common sense.

  “Can you go home and get your inkan during your break?”

  This is not a suggestion, so after a quick lunch at an udon shop near Ôhori Park, I take the train all the way to the condominium, get my ever so important inkan, and return to the office two hours later where I stamp a little box next to my name in the little pay book and get a brown envelope containing a stack of the newest, crispest bills I've ever laid my eyes on.

  Unfortunately, my custodianship over the money is temporary. A few days later, I give the entire amount, and then some, to a woman sitting behind the counter of a shabby little used bookstore a block from my workplace. My first month's rent, plus an amount equivalent to another four month's rent, which I've been told, is the key money--fucking expensive keys--plus one more month's rent for the reikin, a token of appreciation to the realtor, who in this case happens to also be the landlord and downstairs neighbor. Thanks for nothing.

  When I asked my co-workers if I will get any of this deposit back, they cocked their heads and sucked air through their teeth. I took that as a no.

 
So, it's fine dining on stir-fried bean sprouts for the next four weeks: a small price to pay for not having to live an hour out of town in the middle of nowhere. What the hell was I thinking when I agreed to move there?

  In the first few weeks alone at the condominium, I dozed off on the train and missed my station four times. Four times! The first time was in the morning on my way to work. By the time I woke up, I had traveled three stations beyond my stop. I had to scramble out of the train and run across the platform and catch the train going the opposite direction. Had I not been warned so unambiguously by Abazuré that were I ever late, I'd be fired immediately, I might have taken it in stride. Instead, I was pushing people out of the way, dashing through the turnstiles and sprinting like an Olympian all the way from the station to the office where I arrived panting and sweating, a minute to spare on the time clock. The guillotine came to an abrupt halt an inch from my trembling neck.

  One evening as I was riding the last train home, I succumbed to such a deep, dream-filled sleep that I did not wake until the train had arrived in the neighboring prefecture! As it was the last train of the evening, I was left with two options: crashing for the night outside the station with the drunks or forking over five thousand yen--half a day's wages--for a taxi.

  The third time, like the second, was on the ride home after a long tiring day of work. When I nodded off, the train was shoulder to shoulder with equally exhausted salarymen and office ladies who'd had the very life sucked out of them and were now staring vacantly before themselves as if at the smoldering remains of extinguished dreams. I was fully reclined and drooling on the seat, the contents of my grocery bags strewn on the floor, grapefruits and apples rolling about here and there like orphaned children when the conductor woke me. I was the only remaining passenger on the train, which had reached its final destination. The conductor helped me collect my scattered belongings and groceries. Had it been America, I probably would have woken to find myself stripped down to my underwear. I didn't have enough for a cab, so I had to hump it rest of the way to the condominium. An hour's walk in the rain without an umbrella, and loaded down with a week's worth of groceries.

  The following morning I overslept again, yet by the grace of God managed somehow to get to work in time to punch the clock But, by then, I'd had it.

  2

  The Friday evening class consists of three high school students and a rônin, a boy who didn't manage to get into the college of his choice and has decided to spend the year at a yobikô, a kind of cram school for students like him, and give it another shot next winter. I ask him where he wants to go, but he's hesitant to tell me. He's either too embarrassed, or just modest. I prod, I poke, I cajole, until he finally gives in. He wants to go to Waseda University. As it's one of the best private schools in the country, I say he must be smart. He replies that he's not smart, that he's fat.

  When asked what he hopes to study, he says he's not sure. He just wants to get into Waseda like his father. He tells me his father's fat, too. I wish him good luck and he laughs. Everyone laughs when I say good luck. Ten years will pass and people will still be laughing whenever the words good luck pass my lips and I still won't understand why.

  One of the girls, a short roly-poly sophomore at a private girls' school, is excited about her up-coming school trip to Disneyland and the northern island of Hokkaidô. I ask when she's going, she says Tokyo. I ask her again, and she answers Tokyo Disneyland. I say “when?” once more, and she tells me, “In Tokyo.” Is she doing this to me on purpose? Then, deliberately and very slowly, enunciating as clearly as I humanly can and giving the n extra stress I ask, “When are you going?”

  She nods! She gets it! There's a big buck-toothed smile on her round chubby face! “I shee, I shee,” she says. “Hokkaidô.”

  I break out the chalk, write WHEN and WHERE on the board, stab at the WHEN causing the chalk to crumble in my hand and ask for the last time. She apologizes then answers that she's going in July. Progress! But wait, it's only April, why's she all fired up to go now? She says she can't wait to go to Tokyo Disneyland to see “Mickey Mouse ando Donarudo Ducku ando Poo.” I tell her what poo means, then ask whose poo she wants to see, Goofy's? She waves her hand frantically before her face. She doesn't want to see Goofy's doodoo. She wants to see the bear. Oh, you mean Winnie the Pooh. She says, “Yesh, yesh, yesh,” and asks why on earth Christopher Robin would be so mean to call his bear doodoo. I shrug and say, “Maybe it sounded nice.”

  She tells me she's sad to learn what Pooh's name means. I try to comfort her, telling her that she now has something funny to share with her friends at school tomorrow. She says she'll never tell them. Why not, I ask.

  “Because they'd be sad, too.”

  I ask her why they're also going all the way to Hokkaidô which is an hour-and-half-long flight from Tokyo and I'm told that they'll visit the city of Fukugawa to see Clark's statue. When I ask who this Clark person is, the rônin answers, “Boys be ambitious!”

  All of the students nod their heads collectively, and say, “Ambitious.” The phrase rings a bell and I recall having read about the missionary and educator who founded a school in Hokkaidô over a century ago. The sophomore points upwards, imitating the statue. I ask her what Clark's statue is pointing at. She replies, the sky.

  “What the hell's he pointing at the sky for?”

  She giggles and says she isn't sure.

  I tell the girl she's lucky she isn’t a boy.

  “Why's that?”

  “Because if you were a boy, you'd have to be ambitious and work hard. You're a girl. You can take it easy and have fun.”

  She shouts, “Yea! Yea!”

  The poor rônin, however, hangs his weary head.

  3

  After work I squeeze onto a crowded train and head back to the condominium. The worn out passengers hang loosely onto the overhead handles, swaying gently and bumping into each other like racks of beef, frozen and suspended from steel meat hooks.

  Earlier in the day, Abazuré told me the students were happy to have me as their teacher, that I was doing a wonderful job. Compliments are cheap in this country, like smiles at McDonald's, they don't cost a cent, but Abazuré was sincere, eerily so.

  So many of the adult students have declared me “a great teacher” and introduced their friends to the school that most of my morning classes are now filled to capacity. Even dreary old Yumi after sitting in on one of my evening lessons has rediscovered something to be enthusiastic about. All this praise depresses me because there is nothing that makes me feel more like the loser than being told how well I perform tasks embarrassingly beneath my potential. The compliment jars my confidence as malignantly as insults; I feel my dreams begin to slip through my fingers.

  As I ride the train, pressed between the carcasses of salarymen and office ladies, an appalling realization finally begins to seep in. The deposit I paid and the contract I signed with Abazuré as my guarantor have all but indentured me. I was so eager to escape, at any cost, from the inaka, from the condominium in the middle of nowhere, that I didn't give fuck about anything else. Now I do. As much as I am loath to admit it, I am probably looking at another two years performing the old eikaiwa soft-shoe routine. God, how depressing!

  I look at the meat around me. Do they have dreams as well, or have those been extinguished by damp circumstance and necessity? What possesses them to be packed like cattle into trains, to work until they can barely stand? Just to pay off the mortgage on a place where they can drop their weary bones every night? I look at the expressionless faces, the vacant look in the eyes. Each day inertia alone manages to carry them through. Were they ever motivated by dreams, inspired by love? Were they once animals in the sack, passionately thrashing about, lusting for life itself? Or, have they always been pathetic shells of men feigning impotence if only to have an extra half hour of blessed sleep? God help them. And God help me.

  There isn't a single light on in the condominium when I enter the front door. Not a s
ound, save the sickly hum of the second-hand refrigerator, to be heard either. Friday evening, alone with nothing in particular to do. Again. I've come to hate the weekends, hate how they remind me how little there is to look forward to after working all week. I couldn't have been born to live this way.

  I plop down on the woolly carpet in the living room. In the absence of the static work provided, my thoughts tune into Mie. As surely as the tide returns, my thoughts return to her. Where she is? What she’s doing? Who’s she with? Is she thinking about me, wondering these very same things, or is her mind elsewhere? Is there still a pulse to be found in the relationship we once had? Or am I wasting my time waiting for her to discover it, waiting for her to come back? Can the love we had be resuscitated, or is it as hopeless as a naked cadaver lying on a cold stainless steel shelf? It tortures me to think that she may have moved on, that I may have been forgotten when the pain in my heart is still so fresh.

  What the hell am I still in Japan for? If only I could take my deposit back, erase my name and inkan from the apartment contract, and go back to the States. Coming to this country derailed me, and every day that passes is another day further off course.

  I consider calling Aya, having her sneak out of her home to spend the night with me, to have her distract me with those glorious breasts of hers. But the way I'm feeling tonight, I doubt I'd find much consolation in screwing a high school girl. As surely as she would oblige me, I know the morning would greet me more depressed than ever, bitter that it weren't someone I loved lying next to me.