by Rhys Thomas
Chapter Thirty-Two
The low dread returned immediately when he woke up. He’d finally fallen asleep at four in the morning and now it was half one in the afternoon.
Many years before, when he was fourteen or fifteen, he had fallen head over heels in love with a girl at school. It happened at the end of May, those pre-summer days when languid sunsets through moist air give a soft focus to the world. Hormones firing in such floods as to be almost overwhelming, he would sit on the riverbank tossing pebbles into the gentle water and think to himself, I will never forget this. This is the most important thing in the world. He saw adults walk the world and they were serious, distracted, tired-looking, and he thought to himself, I must never be like that. I must never forget the importance of true love.
And he hadn’t forgotten it. But at last he understood why love must, in the end, fade away, how difficult it makes the business of living life. He knew now why the adults of his youth had appeared as they had. Love was too hard.
He was supposed to be meeting Mr Okamatsu in a couple of hours for the trip to Japan so he needed to get out of the house until that time had passed, just in case he showed up. He pictured the little café at the seaside, his perfect hiding spot. He got showered and changed and went out into the driveway, noticing subconsciously a gold Lexus parked opposite. Sam went to open his car door when the realisation of what was happening dawned. There was the sound of footsteps clicking on the driveway, a flock of birds flew out of the tree in his garden, and a strong hand pressed itself into Sam’s shoulder.
‘I have come to collect you, Sam,’ he said.
In the cold air, the sound of a magpie cawing from a rooftop.
‘I can’t go.’
‘The tickets are bought. You are coming to Japan with me.’
His light-sensitive glasses were half clear in the winter light.
‘I have a family, Sam,’ said Mr Okamatsu, firmly. ‘I cannot lose my job because of you.’
Sam stared at him, the energy in his bones singing. A family.
From the drawer of his bedside table he took the fireproof security box where he kept his passport, and also removed the spare mobile phone, locking the box and double-checking it was secure. When he came back downstairs he found Mr Okamatsu staring into the living room, at the stool he’d smashed into the TV, but he said nothing.
His hand hurt like hell, his legs felt weak and cold sweat ran down his ribs as they drove to the airport. They didn’t speak but Mr Okamatsu listened to his classical music compilation album, just as he always did on the business trips Sam had taken with him in the past.
He checked his phone for messages from Sarah, hoping that maybe something had changed, but nothing came and he knew he just had to accept it.
They got to Heathrow and checked in and were ushered through to the departure lounge and it was all dreamlike, the sci-fi sweeps of the steel, the mezzanines, the walls of screens and all the people criss-crossing the atriums, like a moving photograph. His mind felt blurry, fuzzy, not quite able to accept things. He followed Mr Okamatsu, who moved gracefully between the crowds with his small suitcase on wheels. Sam thought of all these people, their lives, their destinations, and this interchange where they amassed. He should have been to more places. They’d want you to be happy.
Huge plate-glass windows looked out on to the runway and here was the first time Sam saw the planes and reality returned. They were so massive. They were impossible and awful. The one nearest the window, the nose so close to the glass it was almost touching, had rust on it where the bolted-on panels met.
Mr Okamatsu took a seat on a bench and Sam joined him. He swore he could feel the temperature of his blood dropping and the chemicals inside it separating out. The low burn of fear. Mr Okamatsu had lied about the flight time because he guessed Sam would try to escape, but even so their gate was soon announced and Sam had no choice but to follow his boss. He never thought he would set foot in an airport again and the fact that he was in one now made no sense. Something didn’t connect. Even thinking about Sarah didn’t work. No matter how hard he tried to focus on anything, the thought slipped from his mind as the irrationality of his fear swelled, as the conjoined histories replayed in his mind, over and over.
On the one side he was in London, on the other he was in an airport in Brazil, his family tugging their luggage along, the twins hopping and jumping. The two moments overlapped – Sam and his impending flight, and what was about to happen to his family. He would arrive at the door of the plane and take his seat, just in the same way they had. He would roll across a strip of concrete and the physics of flight would bear him up into the air – the plane’s angle shifting so that it was no longer in line with the angle of the earth but a curve upwards into the atmosphere – just as their plane had.
‘I need to go to the toilet,’ he said, his voice croaky.
He locked himself into a cubicle. He could hear his own breath, as if his ears had pressurised, and he remembered something. He remembered the day outside with Steve and Sally, the spring day with blue skies and cotton white clouds. Well, isn’t this a lovely day? she’d said. And Steve there, a red balloon on the end of a stick brilliant against the blue of the sky, his voice slow and his eyes on fire. Don’t you wish it could stay like this for ever and ever?
But that’s not how things work. He’d lost Sarah, and his future was nowhere. The trauma around which he’d cobbled together what passed for a life spread through him like a virus.
In his pocket he felt the lump of his spare mobile phone that he’d kept all these years. He switched it on. The blue screen flashed to life. He’d used this phone so many times. Before he met Sarah he used it every day. Then it was every few days, then every week and then hardly at all. It could no longer make calls but he needed it now. He needed to check his voicemail.
His mother spoke first and she said, Hey Sam, extending the word hey: heeeey, Sam, just checking in on you.
In the background Steve and Sally were laughing and talking but Sam had never been able to decipher what they were saying.
Our flight to Manaus is delayed so we’re just calling to see if you’re OK. Hope you’re having a good time in the Beacons – examining your mud.
His dad’s voice called, How’s the mud studies going?!
Sam imagined them huddled around their bags in the airport with the bluster and flux of all the people rushing to be rocketed across the planet, how happy they seemed, and how this made Sam happy because they were happy there, right at the end.
The call was just as long as it was, less than a minute. They’d been in the airport and just made a quick call to check in. To say goodbye. Bye, honey, speak to you soon, be good, she said. Bye Sam, he heard Steve shout, Bye Sam, called his dad, then Sally, then it became a game, and in his mind’s eye each time they shouted Bye Sam an image of whoever shouted it appeared in his vision, each overlaying the last: his mum, Steve, Sally, his dad, Steve, Sally, his mum; Bye Sam. Bye Sam.
Bye Sam.
He saw them, burning up, a tide of fire washing across them.
The phone was held in his left hand by his side, clutched tight, and the sound beyond of an aeroplane taking off put a frost in his blood. The sound rushed and filled, penetrating deep into his core, a sound so loud it might shake him apart, then it was cut to nothing by the door swinging and a voice.
‘Sam,’ it said. ‘It is time to go.’
He placed the palms of his hands calmly down on each armrest and pushed his head back into the seat. He took a deep breath. The sound of things ramping up, the quick shudders across the structure, the sight of the enormous wing and the huge cone of the engine. How things might have been different if he’d answered that phone and spoken to them one last time.
Mr Okamatsu, sitting next to him, leaned across and did something Sam did not expect. He put his hand on his forearm and said, ‘It’s going to be OK. This is normal.’
Sam turned, but Mr Okamatsu’s face was staring straig
ht ahead.
He saw his signet ring, with the carved lizard motif.
This was happening. He was on-board and though his mouth was dry, and his fingers were digging into the armrests, he was, at least, on-board. He closed his eyes a moment and felt the acceleration. He’d forgotten the power of the thrust and the moment when you hold your breath, the way the world floats away beneath you, the horizon shifting as you turn, and suddenly the view from above the clouds is beautiful, dreamlike, like something special that was forgotten at some unknown moment in our history, that day we let go of the rocket tree.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Fields rolled and gave to winter woods, then flat marshlands with wide expanses of water; pylons marched back to the horizon. Sometimes the train passed along the side of highways standing on tall concrete pillars, and towns and villages on hillsides, until the Earth spun away and in the darkness orange and white lights suggested lives out there in the black.
Sam had never experienced jet lag. He’d dozed in and out of sleep on the plane and now didn’t feel tired at all. The lights in the countryside became brighter as the train bore them towards Tokyo. The city was massive, stretching far, far back as the train carved its route between a hotchpotch of architecture, sixties-looking buildings with balconies stuck on here and there, buildings put up between other buildings, wide roads and thin, jagged alleyways. Sam jumped as another train passing in the opposite direction slammed past and he got a real sense of how fast they were going.
They arrived in Shibuya Station and collected their things.
‘We will catch another train to our hotel but first I want to show you something,’ said Mr Okamatsu.
They made their way through the throngs and Mr Okamatsu spoke over his shoulder.
‘Tokyo is too busy for me. Too many people.’
Sam watched the lights flicker on the lenses of Mr Okamatsu’s glasses. He led Sam out of the station on to a big plaza that he recognised from films, the Shibuya crossing, the idea of Tokyo most people carry in their heads, with the bright lights, the swarms of people, the mysterious, other-worldly glyphs on the signs, the banks of brilliant screens set into the side of buildings.
‘All this,’ said Mr Okamatsu, turning and leaning on the pull-out handle of his suitcase, ‘is only part of Japan.’
He went over to a circular slab of concrete stuck on to the edge of the plaza, surrounded by low bushes and trees. In the centre of it was a bronze statue of a dog on top of a stone plinth. The sound of the city was deafening and Sam had to lean in to hear Mr Okamatsu.
‘This is Hachikō.’
The dog was resting on its hind legs and was big, bear-like. One of its ears flopped forward.
‘Hachikō’s owner lived near this station. When he came home each day on the train, Hachikō would wait for him. One day his owner did not return. He had died in work. Hachikō arrived on time but his owner was not there. The next day the same. Hachikō came back every day, at the exact time the train was due, but his owner was never there. But he still came back. Every day. For nine years.’
Sam looked up at the statue of the dog and felt his throat go heavy.
‘He was very loyal. He was . . . a good friend,’ said Mr Okamatsu.
Wide awake in the middle of the night, Sam dived into the empty swimming pool of the hotel. As a child he would swim down to the bottom and touch his chest to the floor, kicking his legs, seeing how far he could make it without surfacing for air.
The next morning, Mr Okamatsu knocked on his door. They were both wearing suits and, though he looked smart, Sam felt absolutely terrible. He was sick with tiredness and his hand throbbed with dull pain. Outside their hotel they walked with their suitcases along a busy four-lane expressway until Mr Okamatsu took them down a quiet alleyway, a secret cut-through lined with thick-trunked, winter-bare trees that leaned over like crooked old men.
Sam looked out between the gaps of the trees at the quiet backstreets. He was struck by the telephone wires and electrical lines that criss-crossed the sky at every angle. There was a gentleness in the air; even with the bustle of the city, there was a calmness beneath it that Sam, in his state of fatigue, was able to synch with.
They came out, at last, on to another wide road with tall buildings either side. The Electronica Diablique HQ was near the big Sony building in Shinagawa and when they reached the atrium – a wide space with tiles shined to a high gloss and potted trees standing sentinel, each equidistant from the next – Mr Okamatsu turned to Sam.
‘OK, we go in now. You remember what to say?’
‘Ohayou gozaimasu,’ said Sam, pronouncing each syllable slowly. It was a Japanese greeting.
Okamatsu nodded his approval.
Sam then bowed just a little and said, ‘Oh-aye dic-tish-te ko-ee dis.’
‘Very good.’
Mr Okamatsu inspected Sam, and Sam detected the nervousness in the big man.
‘Sam,’ he said. ‘Do not mention the air shipping costs at all.’
Over at the desk a woman in a smart red suit answered a telephone.
Okamatsu stepped towards Sam and said conspiratorially, ‘You are here to meet Mr Takahashi. Nothing else. For all the good work you have done.’
Sam didn’t understand.
‘Come,’ said Okamatsu, moving across to the lifts.
They were ushered into the President’s office and a short, stocky man stood up from behind a huge maple desk, the grand panorama of Tokyo stretching out behind him as far as the horizon.
‘Ah,’ said the President, sidling round to greet them.
His face was impressively ugly, seemingly wider than it was long, and like it was made of granite. He came over to Sam, and Sam only just remembered to recite his lines.
‘Yes, yes,’ said Mr Takahashi, shaking Sam’s hand warmly and smiling. ‘I hope you don’t mind if I speak English,’ he said, perfectly. ‘I don’t get to use it much these days. When did you fly in?’
‘Today,’ said Sam. ‘No, yesterday, sorry.’
Mr Okamatsu said a long sentence in Japanese and Mr Takahashi nodded and said, ‘Ah,’ several times.
‘Sam,’ he said, ‘come and look at this.’
He took him to the side of the room where a big display cabinet stood. Inside was a collection of gleaming electrical components. Mr Takahashi took a key from his pocket, unlocked the glass doors and removed, from the lowermost shelf, a samurai sword. There was a steadiness in his every movement, an assured dignity that countered his ugliness and made him appealing.
‘You know what this is?’ He drew the sword from its sheath with a metallic hiss.
Sam said he did not.
‘This sword belonged to Mr Yoshimoto, the founder of this company. He made it himself in his smelting shop, many hundreds of years ago. And with all the developments of the world, it is still here. In this room.’
The blade reflected silver light across Mr Takahashi’s cheeks.
‘It is a great treasure. Sometimes, when I am feeling a little . . . glum, I will take out this sword and hold it and remember that everything passes.’
Sam nodded.
‘Mr Okamatsu tells me you are an excellent employee, a true asset to our company.’
Sam glanced across to Mr Okamatsu, who was staring out the window at the building opposite.
Was he hallucinating all this? Mr Takahashi opened one of the drawers in the cabinet, removed a black lacquer box, and presented it in both hands to Sam. Sam stared at it, then up at Takahashi, who was grinning at him expectantly. Sam remembered the etiquette, bowed and took the box.
‘We do not give these to many people,’ said Mr Takahashi.
Sam opened the box. Inside, on a bed of silk, was a perfect, miniaturised replica of Mr Yoshimoto’s katana. Sam blinked his heavy eyelids and removed the tiny sword from the box. He took it out of its scabbard and the steel was so shiny it hurt his tired eyes.
‘You open letters with it,’ said Takahashi, lowering his head into Sa
m’s eyeline and nodding.
Sam inserted the little katana back into its sheath and closed the box. Nothing seemed real.
‘It’s wonderful,’ he said.
He noticed Okamatsu and Takahashi exchange curt nods and the sunshine of realisation blew away the fog.
Nothing was as it seemed. They weren’t, as Mr Okamatsu had told Mr Takahashi, going to one of their Chinese plants after the visit to HQ.
Instead, they took a train out to the suburbs, where Mr Okamatsu wanted Sam to meet his family. As the train bumped over the tracks, Sam fell asleep and was woken up by his boss when they reached their stop. It was much quieter here. They wheeled their suitcases up and down some narrow, hilly streets, past houses with all sorts of strange protrusions. The gardens were neatly kept, with evergreen bushes manicured into orbs and curlicues. The thick telephone wires were like scribbles on the grey sky.
Okamatsu’s house was set back off the long, deserted street, at the summit of several steep, heavily vegetated terraces, only the windows of the top floor and the curved tile roof were visible. The stone steps were lined with long grasses that shimmered like spirits in the low breeze. The house was wide, with a low, generous wooden porch area; lanterns hanging from the eaves of the roof. Large plated windows looked out over the terraces to the prefecture below. It reminded Sam of a giant toad lying in wait.
A woman came out on to the porch and waved. She was tall and thin and neat, with short, black hair combed into a side parting and a small, pointed nose. Mr Okamatsu nodded to her and kissed her on the cheek, an unshowy display of affection. He said something in Japanese and she nodded and turned to Sam, and when she smiled her efficient face lit up.
‘This is my wife, Miho,’ said Mr Okamatsu.