by James O'Reilly, Larry Habegger, Sean O'Reilly (ed) (retail) (epub)
I thought: “Kali Ma, have I not sacrificed love? Have I not sacrificed comfort and sex and security and friends, to live this way, to bear these pressures, to be changed? Have I not offered up my fear, everything that is weak in me, to your teeth?”
I knew that I had come to the road alone only to travel it, to cast my fixed identity aside like a crab that has outgrown its shell. Oh, but how vulnerable, I thought, the rain drumming on the roof, my body as porous as a sieve; how fearful it is to go naked, into the vagrant wilderness, before a greater shell is found.
SEA OF FACES
Things come to fullness in time. A week later, I am in the lowlands again, on the platform of New Jalpaiguri Station, waiting, in the polluted haze and in the confusion of my memories, for a train. And in the Times of India, blown through the dust of the platform and past the trash and empty cups of chai, which I seize and read to pass the time, there is a story. It is a completely ordinary Indian story: eighteen infants, all terribly poor, dead in only thirty-six hours at a single Calcutta hospital; but it is the photograph that accompanies it that paralyzes me completely.
Poorly composed and snapped by some cub staff photog for this minor news piece, it shows a man, mid-thirties and mustached, his face a mixture of outrage and grief as he holds in both hands toward the camera the swaddled body of his dead child. Beside him, his wife, her head covered with a shawl, turns into her husband’s shoulder, her features a mask of pure anguish, sobbing. Behind and all around is a sea of faces—dozens, a crowd, as there is always a crowd everywhere in India—but so wild with the symphony of powerful and conflicting human emotions that it arrests my attention completely, tears at the center of me, that I wonder at the meaning of myself at all.
God, I think, the smell of burning garbage filling my head on the sour breeze, how this place wounds me. This journey into the hills—Ronald and Aryun, the long walk, the leeches and the difficulty and the loneliness; the fear of death, loveless and alone—I know that these have taken a piece of my heart, as is the certain way of questions without answers. But there is a magic to living these questions here, lost in this most ancient of places, immersed in this most ancient of rites.
I stand on the platform in the center of myself, utterly broken and inadequate, but knowing that when I give my heart to India, India gives its heart right back, brighter than my own could ever be. And once again, as I have now for years—as the train draws up in the heavy air—as I meet the faces though the dusty windows peering into my own eyes—I thank the Universe that it has brought me through, and step, without expectations and without fear, into the waiting train alone.
Winner of the seventh annual Solas Awards for Best Travel Writing, Matthew Crompton is a writer, photographer, and occasional metaphysician now residing in Sydney after previous lives in Seoul, San Francisco, and Cleveland. His travels have taken him through the worst hotels on five continents, and he counts himself lucky to have caught giardia and chikungunya only once apiece. His writing and photographs have been published in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and throughout Asia, and his story “Camel College” appeared in The Best Travel Writing 2011. For his next trip, he plans to cycle across the Asia. Follow his photography, travel exploits and fevered musings at www.goingaroundplaces.com.
KELLY LUCE
Show Me, Shouyu
Two women get a strange but inspired tour of a soy sauce factory on a rural Japanese island.
A sculpted pumpkin the size of a minivan, a restaurant constructed solely of beer cans—the islands of Japan’s Inland Sea all seem to be known for something. That summer, Lindsey, a fellow English teacher, and I had made it our quest to visit them all.
We traveled to Shodoshima—“little bean island”—for its two main attractions: cycling and soy factories. That morning we’d set out along a grueling bike trail that snaked among pale green hills and along the sandy fringes of the coastline before reaching our destination, the Marukin Soybean Factory. We weren’t particularly interested in soybeans, but the humongous vats of fermenting beans at this place were the stuff of legend. The pamphlet promised free group tours daily at three o’clock. But it was a long, hard trail, and riding through that thick August air was like pedaling through butter. By the time we’d walked our bikes up the steep drive to the Marukin building, I could have wrung out my t-shirt. Worst of all, it was five past three. In a land where trains are scheduled to the second, we worried we’d missed out.
A young man in a suit glanced up sleepily from behind a reception desk. His eyes widened at the two scummy foreign girls standing before him. We said hello, and when I asked for the tour in passable Japanese, he seemed to relax.
He stood. “Ah, yes. Come with me.”
I gave Lindsey a look that said, See? There’s nothing to worry about. We’ll catch up to the group and everything will be just fine.
We followed him into an elevator. I sunk into a corner, hoping he couldn’t smell us. Finally, he said, in English, “My name is Hiroki.” The door opened and he led us down another hall into a small, empty theater.
“Moo-bee,” he said, bowing. Then he rushed out of the room.
“What happened to the group tour?” I asked Lindsey.
“I think this is the group tour.”
The lights went out and the small projection screen at the front of the room came to life. The video, backed by good-natured folk music, tracked the factory’s soybean-processing history from the pre-war days. Apparently, a man with an unfortunate mustache moved to the island, saw lots of soybeans, and was inspired to build a processing plant. He passed the business on to his son, a savvy businessman whose mustache was equally appalling. The video made the place look respectable, clean, and efficient. I strained to keep my eyelids up.
Hiroki returned as soon as the credits rolled. He bowed again and made a grand gesture that we should follow him. We got back in the elevator.
In my most polite Japanese, I asked, “Will we see the real factory?” Hiroki pursed his lips and sucked air through his teeth. I pressed on. “We love soy sauce. We want to see the big . . .” I didn’t know the word for “vats” so I pantomimed with my arms a shape unmistakable as either “large container” or “pregnant ladies.”
He clapped. “Ahhh,” he said, nodding. Then he sucked in some more air and said, “Today is a little . . . impossible.”
The door opened, and we were back in the lobby. Hiroki held up his hand and told us to wait just a moment. Then he ran out of sight, the tails of his jacket flapping behind him.
“So much for the vats,” I said.
“There’s still hope,” Lindsey said, positive as always. “I can feel it.”
We heard a patter of footsteps and then Hiroki appeared out of a hallway. He was grinning. With him was another man, older and taller, whose gut extended outward like a barrel. A barrel in a very expensive suit.
Hiroki spoke formally. This is, he said proudly, the President of Marukin.
The President flashed us a polite smile, and we introduced ourselves. He did not bow; we shook hands all around. His was just a last name: Shikara. No mustache.
Shikara-san wore his belly like an executive’s desk. He spoke from behind it in firm tones to Hiroki, who nodded quickly, then bowed and scuttled out the front door.
We smiled and acted embarrassed, not because we were but because the situation seemed to call for it.
“You like . . .” he began in English. “You like shouyu?”
We nodded. Yes, we liked soy sauce.
He stuck out his lips and stroked his cheek. “You come, my car,” he said. “I show you . . .” I could feel the pun coming. “I show you . . . shouyu!” He laughed loudly, and we laughed too.
It was a public holiday, he told us—Respect for the Aged Day—so there were no tours being conducted. But apparently, we were special guests. A shiny black Mercedes stopped in front of us.
Lindsey and I looked pointedly at our clothes. A thick crust of dirt wrapped around my shoes and, thoug
h the sweat on my neck had dried, my shirt clung to my back.
Shikara-san waved his hand as if to say it didn’t matter. He took Hiroki’s place in the driver’s seat, and we got in the back. Shikara-san stepped on it, and we took off on a side road into the forest, kicking up dust at Hiroki, who stood waving behind us.
Shikara-san wanted to know all about our hometowns, our travels, and our opinions of the Japanese people. He told us about himself. He was not born on the island; he was a native Edoko—child of Tokyo—and had come to Shodoshima when his father, the previous company president, had died. Lindsey remarked that he must be very busy and he replied, “Yes, but soybeans are good friends.”
After a few minutes, a low gray building came into view among the trees. Shikara-san pulled up to the front of the building and parked.
He gazed at the doors. “This,” he said slowly, as if we were children learning a secret, “is home of number one shouyu.” He paused. “My grandfather build.”
He got out of the car and unlocked the front doors and, finally, we were inside the factory.
It was all one giant room cast in yellow light. Except for the walls, which were stacked from floor to ceiling with large cans, the place appeared to be empty. I looked down. Bingo!
The floor was a giant cupcake tin. The vats were built into the floor, their round mouths full of dark brown goop. There were about thirty in the place, lined up in rows of five, placed side by side with just barely enough space for a person to walk in between.
Shikara-san nodded, taking our stares for appreciation. “Deep is about two meters,” he told us.
We crept in for a closer look. The vats were about three meters across. Wooden lids covered some but quite a few were open. A wide plank, sitting just a finger’s length above the burgundy soup, spanned the vat nearest to us.
Shikara-san walked to the nearby vat and on the plank he placed one leather shoe, followed by the other, as if he were strolling down a promenade. The right edge of the board lifted slightly and our eyes widened. He threw his left arm out for balance. In horror, we watched as one perfectly pleated right leg rose in the air, almost parallel to the beans. I could have sworn he was pointing his toes. Each moment seemed to be dipped in molasses, stretching slowly and helplessly before us.
Then he was in the vat.
Time burst free again. Shikara-san’s head popped out of the goop; his arms batted at the surface. Images of quicksand drownings flashed through my mind. Will fermenting soybeans swallow a person up? Is there real danger here, and if I reach to grab him will he pull me in too, and will we drown and suffocate in soybeans?
Lindsey appeared to be thinking the same thing, and Shikara-san was oozing deeper into the mixture. As I was desperately trying to think of something to say, he wiped his eyes and looked up at us.
“O.K., O.K.,” he said, blowing a drop of goo from his upper lip. Then he extended his arm and gave us a dripping thumbs-up. “Please bring Hiroki!”
Lindsey and I glanced at Shikara-san, then at each other. He wasn’t going to die. We bolted for the door.
Ten minutes later, we burst through the glass doors, sweating and gasping for breath. We called Hiroki’s name into the empty lobby.
When Hiroki appeared, looking concerned, I could only say, “Excuse me for disturbing you. The boss is in the beans.”
His jaw dropped. He made a swimming motion, and we nodded. He ran outside and appeared a minute later with another car, this one probably his, a small blue Toyota. We piled in and sped toward the factory.
Shikara-san had managed to reach the edge of the vat. He had thrown his elbows onto the floor and propped himself up partway out of the beans. Hiroki squawked and rushed to his boss’s aid. He grabbed Shikara-san’s hands and leaned back with all this weight. Shikara-san rose slowly out of the muck. At one point it seemed that Hiroki, too, would fall victim to the vats—he was leaning back far over the next container—but remarkably, he kept his balance. Finally, Shikara-san was out, curled on his side, panting and covered in goop.
Hiroki helped him up and led us all outside. Shikara-san asked us to wait, then he and Hiroki disappeared behind the corner of the building.
“We’re never going to see him again,” I said. “I don’t know who’s more embarrassed. I almost think I’d feel less awkward had it been me in the vat.”
Lindsey said, “No way. Those beans have been fermenting for years. Do you want to be responsible for ruining three years’ worth of soy sauce?”
She had a point. I tried not to laugh, but at this point it was hard to keep it in.
Curiosity got the best of me. I poked my head around the corner and was surprised to see Shikara-san and Hiroki standing near a shed. Hiroki was holding a long green garden hose and—
“He’s hosing him down,” I whispered.
“No.”
“Yes. Oh—get back. They’re done.”
Shikara-san rounded the corner first. He was still wearing his suit, which was soaked and dripping. He wiped a drop of water from his brow.
“Funny!” he said, grinning. Then, unbelievably: “Shall we continue?”
He hopped the steps and held open the factory door. A few stray beans stuck to his jacket and one hung from his ear.
Lindsey took one look at me, and we both burst out laughing. It was the kind of laugh that chokes you, that silent laugh that tires out your abs. I was helpless to stop; all I could do was look up at Shikara-san and motion to my ear. He reached up and felt the bean. Then he too was laughing.
I was relieved, which only made me laugh harder. Even red-faced Hiroki let out a giggle.
We did finish the tour after all; Shikara-san insisted on it despite his dripping suit and shoes that squished loudly in the deserted factory.
When it was over, Shikara-san dropped us off at the main building (Hiroki brought a towel for the Mercedes), and we said our goodbyes, bowing this time, and set off down the hill on our bikes. I looked over my shoulder and saw Shikara-san outlined by blue sky at the top of the hill, waving vigorously at us. Lindsey and I threw our hands up in a backwards wave and sped down the hill with the wind whipping our faces, the wide blue sea in our view.
Kelly Luce is the author of Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail. Her work has been recognized by fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Ragdale Foundation, the Kerouac Project, and Jentel Arts, and has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Salon, American Short Fiction, The Southern Review, and other magazines. She lives in Austin, Texas, where she is a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers and fiction editor of Bat City Review.
LISA ALPINE
Fish Trader Ray
My Amazon man, as large as life.
“Sitten ze down!” The German’s livid face was as red as an equatorial sun setting through the pollution haze of a third-world metropolis.
Flora and I looked at each other. She winked, and we wobbled the canoe back and forth with our newly acquired hip-shaking samba dance moves. Again. It was too delicious to be exacting revenge on the pissy photographer, who was tightly gripping both sides of the pencil-thin canoe. Murky, chocolate-brown river water splashed into the hull. This sent him into full-throttle hysteria.
Should we tip him overboard? I could tell Flora was thinking the same thing. No one would know. We were in the heart of the Upper Amazon Basin on a remote, flooded tributary.
He had shown up the day before. Ray had sent him. A photographer on assignment for a travel magazine. He had a lot of expensive camera gear with him.
Ray had also sent me to stay with Flora. I had arrived one week ago with a hammock that I hung from the rafters of her tiny hut. We’d hit it off, having more in common than one would suspect between a tribal Amazonian woman and a middle-class California chick. We were the same age and had the same men issues. Daily I went out on the river with her three young children to catch fish in handheld nets. We would carefully flip the iridescent wriggling fish from the netting into tightly woven, waterproof basket
s. Flora sent these to Ray via the weekly mail panga—a long, narrow, motorized canoe. Ray was a tropical fish trader.
It was a two-day boat ride from the jungle port town of Leticia, where I had come from, to Flora’s hut. I had wanted to spend time deep in the Amazon Basin. That meant getting off the well-trafficked thoroughfare of the Amazon River and into its backwaters.
Fish Trader Ray was the man for my Amazon plan.
I had met Ray in a hotel lobby in Bogotá, Colombia at the beginning of my South American odyssey four months earlier. Fantasies of rubbing shoulders with a bunch of colorful characters straight out of Graham Greene and Gabriel García Márquez novels were the extent of my travel plans. And of course, to experience the Amazon and go to Carnival.
I landed in Bogotá on a $125 round trip ticket on Avianca Airlines from Miami. I spoke zero Spanish but managed to find a dingy yet elegant hotel with high ceilings, fans, and gleaming hardwood floors in the colonial part of town. I was immediately enthralled by the mustachioed men with battered leather briefcases drinking café tinto and holding their morning meetings in the overstuffed lobby chairs, and the plain-faced Catholic nuns from missions deep in the selva sipping from green glass Coca-Cola bottles. Then there was Ray—a big, loud twangy-talking Texan, who looked like he desperately needed something cool to drink, wearing a pastel striped shirt with sweat stains under his armpits.
Desi Arnaz and Carmen Miranda were my only window into Latin culture. Oh, and the crazy nonstop partying Brazilians I had met the year before in Paris. Expecting salsa and rumba dancing in the streets with sexy ladies crowned in tropical fruit hats, I was dismayed to find Bogotá a slummy and polluted place populated by sullen citizens shuffling down the sidewalks. At 8,600 feet in elevation, this dreary city was chilly and overcast with nada a Busby Berkeley fruit hat in sight.