by Susan Barker
Her voice trailed off nervously, and rightly so. I had my stony face on, the one I reserve for rogue builders and insurance salesmen. Four hours is a very long time to sit waiting on a wooden park bench for a person. I wondered then if Mariko entertained any fanciful romantic notions about me. I immediately dismissed this idea as ludicrous. What would a rose in the bloom of youth want from a grumpy old salaryman like me? Mariko bit her lip, eyes downcast at my fierce manners.
‘Mariko,’ I said, ‘when you phoned me here the other week I was very unhappy about it. I thought that I had made this clear to you. Well, I am unhappier still about you visiting me here in person. Your being here is highly inappropriate.’
‘I made certain that most people had left before I came in. I sneaked past the security guard when he went for a cigarette break. Then I found my way to your office in the dark. I didn’t knock because I wanted to be certain all your co-workers had already left.’ Mariko’s eyes were wide and imploring, but her stealthy pluck did not win me over one bit.
‘The fact you are here when everyone else has gone makes this all even worse,’ I said sternly.
‘But there was no other way for me to see you,’ she said. ‘After I called you I thought you would stop by at The Sayonara Bar. I watched out for you every night. When you didn’t come, I knew that it was up to me to visit you . . .’
‘Did it occur to you that I have no desire to hear whatever you had to say?’
As you well know, this is not entirely true. And confronted with Mariko once more, the heartsick confusion of that evening I almost went to speak to her returned.
I was ready to insist that Mariko leave, when I saw that she had begun to cry. Her eyes were glossy with tears, which tumbled silently down her cheeks.
‘Please . . .’ she pleaded, her throat constricted with anguish.
As the tears spilt, my resolve deteriorated. I winced, ill equipped to deal with such an outburst. ‘Um . . . Mariko . . . there is no need for this. Please stop that now . . .’ I said.
‘Since the night I first saw you,’ she said, ‘I have dreamt of you every night.’
It sounded as though she was reciting a romantic song lyric. I shook my head, afflicted with the overwhelming sentiment that this was wrong.
‘I dream that we are walking along a white beach that stretches for miles. We are walking, and then suddenly you keel over, screaming that someone is stabbing you. I am frightened. I think that you are dying. I try to help you up, but you are in too much pain. Our hut is further down the beach, so I run towards the hut to call for an ambulance.’
I felt the blood drain from my face. It had to be coincidence, it just had to be.
‘Then I wake up,’ she said, ‘and I am crying.’
‘This is preposterous,’ I said, in a faraway voice that seemed to filter from the air vents.
‘I think I am going mad,’ Mariko said. ‘You are a stranger to me, and yet I think of you constantly.’
My head spun. It had been you who had run down the beach to call the ambulance. Mariko hadn’t even been born then. Why would Mariko dream that she was you? This has to be a coincidence.
‘You dream this every night?’ I asked.
Mariko nodded.
‘This is a most abnormal state of affairs,’ I said. ‘Who told you about the kidney stone I had in Okinawa? Who have you been speaking to?’
Though my tone was not angry or accusatory, Mariko sank to her knees in a sad, swooping motion. She threw down the bento box as she fell. It bounced once, and skidded beneath Miss Hatta’s desk. She hid her face in her hands and wept.
‘I don’t know anything about your kidney stone. I don’t know about Okinawa. The dreams are all I know,’ she cried. ‘And I don’t want them. I hate them. I hate you. Every night before I sleep I pray that this will stop.’
The poor girl was truly beside herself. I leant over slightly and reached out to comfort her. My hand hovered uncertainly by her shoulder, unable to make contact with any part of her.
‘Perhaps you should seek medical help,’ I murmured helplessly.
‘I don’t really hate you,’ she said.
Along the corridor a door slammed shut and we both jumped. Perhaps the door slam had been in protest against our voices, which had no doubt been raised during our exchange.
Mariko hushed her voice to a whisper. ‘Sometimes, when I am still half asleep, a woman appears. She kneels by my futon and strokes my hair.’ Mariko paused, to allow me time to absorb this detail of her dream world. She continued, in a voice like a wisp of smoke: ‘She strokes my hair and tells me that everything will be OK. She says she will look after me. She says she knows that I am lonely and alone, but I will not have to endure this for much longer. She will guide me to safety.’
‘This woman,’ I said. ‘What does she look like?’
All trace of tears had vanished from Mariko’s face. She brushed a strand of hair from her brow and looked me dead in the eyes. ‘She looks very much like me,’ Mariko said, ‘but she says her name is Reiko.’
We spoke no more of dreams and apparitions after that.
I saw Mariko off at the taxi rank. Then I caught the train home. Since then I have been thinking non-stop about what she said.
When Mariko spoke your name, the room fell very still, as though we were standing in the eye of a tempest. How the devil had she come by your name?
I am confounded by the riddle of Mariko’s dreams. Her words echo over and over as I twist them inside out for hidden meaning, like clues to a cryptic puzzle. Maybe Mariko is lying; maybe this is an elaborate ruse. But I am not a gullible man. There was nothing disingenuous about Mariko’s distress tonight. We will talk again tomorrow, when she is calmer. I have arranged to meet her at six o’clock, on the same wooden bench where she sat waiting for me today. I need to know more.
IV
At work this morning, all I could think about was the night before. My powers of concentration diminished, I caught myself staring out of the window. A skyscraper was being built half a kilometre away, and I was transfixed by the canary-yellow crane hoisting slabs of concrete thirty storeys high. Thankfully, this introspective mood did not last. There was plenty of work to do and before long I was reimmersed in the day-to-day business of the office.
Miss Yamamoto is proving herself to be quite the office star. During the night she spotted some clerical errors in the files she had taken home with her – errors that would have resulted in the monthly misallocation of over 30,000 yen of funds. If it wasn’t for Miss Yamamoto’s eagle eyes and acumen the Finance Department would be in very hot water come July. When I announced this to the office, no one came forward to accept the blame. I really ought to keep a closer eye on the accounts.
At quarter to six I grew restless. At three minutes to, I collected my briefcase and coat and told Matsuyama-san that I was off. The sight of me leaving earlier than him caused Matsuyama-san to look up at the clock in mild disorientation. ‘Already?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Don’t work too hard.’ Then I said goodbye and walked out of the door.
The cramped triangle of grass opposite the Daiwa Trading building scarcely merits the title ‘park’. The grass is trampled and dull, and the flowerbeds are barren. You will be pleased to hear, however, that the saplings they planted in 1991 have sprung up into hale and hearty copper beeches. I sat on a bench beneath one of these sturdy specimens, my briefcase flat on my lap, as I waited for Mariko.
There were few people in the park. A man chugged about in a sweatband and jogging suit, and two high-school sweethearts stole a kiss at the park gates. The snack vendor beside my bench was packing his cart away. He caught my eye and gestured to the sky.
‘It’s going to be pissing down soon – you’d be best off heading home.’
It had been overcast all day, and the sky was now very dark and menacing.
‘I am waiting for a friend,’ I said.
‘Well, your friend had better turn up soon, or she’ll make a dr
owned rat of you.’
The vendor rolled his cart away, whistling as cans of fizzy pop rattled in the coolbox. It was now quarter past six. It would be a shame to leave after waiting fifteen minutes and just miss her, I thought. I was beginning to understand the logic that had kept Mariko chained to the park bench for four hours the night before.
Another twenty minutes was all it took to prove the vendor right. Without warning, the trapdoors of heaven burst wide open. Two boys with Mohawks, and chains dangling from their baggy pants, whooped and wheelied on their squat little bikes, punching the air as though there is no greater joy on earth than being soaked to one’s skin. I left the park at once, muttering damnations as I held my briefcase ineffectually over my head. I proceeded to the subway station, where I joined many others seeking refuge from the rain.
Mariko’s failure to appear concerned me. She had been so pleased when I agreed to the six o’clock meeting – surely she wouldn’t break it without good reason. Though reluctant to do so, I decided that I had better go to the hostess bar to check that she was OK. I could be in and out in ten minutes, and thankfully it was still too early for an encounter with Murakami-san and his pesky sidekick Taro.
It had been some weeks since I had last frequented the bar. The downstairs lobby was dingier then I remembered. The floor, littered with cigarette ends, could have done with a good sweep and mop. There was also a faint urinal odour that made me not want to touch anything.
My nerves jangled all the way up in the lift. Silly, really, because I had been twice before and knew what to expect. Or so I thought.
Three American hostesses were posted at the door, foiling my plan to slip by unnoticed to the bar. ‘Welcome!’ they chorused and bowed. It was like being greeted by three larger-than-life mannequins. Their smiles leapt out at me, all creamy lipstick and even teeth. I shrank back towards the door.
The most Amazonian of the hostesses stepped forward in a clingy dress of emerald-green sequins. ‘Good evening!’ she sang in exotically accented Japanese. ‘I take coat. Wow! You wet! Outside, strong rain. We bring towel. You come here before?’ What the Amazonian lacked in fluency she made up for in volume.
‘Yes, he has been here before,’ another girl piped up. It was Stephanie from Florida. Her orange tresses were offset by a leopard-print dress (which in all honesty was more suited for use as a summer nightie than evening wear). ‘He’s a friend of Murakami-san.’
‘Which one?’
Stephanie said a few words of English and the girls laughed.
‘A friend of Murakami-san! Why didn’t you say so?’ the third girl, a blonde, oozed like treacle. ‘We just adore Murakami-san here.’
‘Glasses wet! We bring tissue! Wipe glasses!’ shouted the Amazonian.
‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I do not intend to stay long. I would just like a quick word with Mariko, if she is not too busy.’
I scanned the empty lounge, thinking I might spy her against the velvet maroon décor. Even without clientele or hostesses, the lounge still gave the impression of wealth and sumptuous warmth. A Japanese hostess with Cleopatra eye make-up sat at the bar, lazily picking at a salad with her chopsticks.
‘Mariko?’ asked Stephanie.
I nodded and the three American girls consulted each other in English, spitting foreign words as vigorously as machine-gunfire. Though I had taken two English-language modules at university, the only word I could discern was ‘Mariko’. The treacly-voiced blonde looked at me, clapped her hands and shrieked with laughter. This made me rather paranoid.
Stephanie from Florida turned to me, her smile as bright and reassuring as the noonday sun. ‘I’m sorry, but Mariko is not here . . . Phone us tomorrow evening and we’ll let you know if she is working. That’ll save you the trouble of coming all the way here.’
‘Hey, why not stay?’ the blonde purred, hand on hip. ‘How often do you get to have three gorgeous women all to yourself?’
I gave a forced laugh of unqualified terror. ‘Ha ha ha . . . I must go home now . . . thank you . . . you are, uh . . .’
I bowed and apologized, almost tripping over a potted fern in my haste to retreat.
The heavens grizzled in the aftermath of the storm. Water gurgled in the roadside drains and the streets were slick with puddles, which boomeranged light back at the store fronts. My mood was very gloomy and apathetic, and I made no attempt to avoid these puddles as I walked home from the station. I splashed through them, until my socks squelched at every step. When I realized what I had done I felt very childish and small indeed.
As I turned into our street I could hear one of the Okamura children practising ‘Greensleeves’ on the piano. The rhythm was clumsy and the melody was interspersed with many false notes. There was also a lengthy pause, during which I can only assume that a page was being turned. Perhaps I am getting old and sentimental, but I found the music strangely charming. Such a rag-tag of children they have in that house, how you could remember all their names I’ll never know.
As I approached our front gate I saw that the light was on in Mrs Tanaka’s bedroom window. The curtains were open and I could see her pacing back and forth in her royal-blue housecoat. When she spotted me she came to the window and twitched at the curtains. I remember wondering why Mrs Tanaka was so lively. As you know, from seven o’clock onwards Mrs Tanaka sits knitting and watching her favourite television programmes with Mr Tanaka. I waved to her, but she did not return my greeting. Instead she watched intently as I unlatched my front gate.
I noticed it straight away, the dark mound on our doorstep. What could that be? I wondered, squinting through the darkness. It looked like a bag of rubbish, or a large bundle of rags. I think I mentioned the other week about the rusty old pram someone had dumped in Mr Oe’s front yard. Well, I thought a similar trick had been played on me here. I proceeded cautiously towards the mound, then stopped in my tracks. The mound moved, offering me a glimpse of something long and pale: a leg. My perspective shifted, and I saw that what I had thought was a mound was in fact a person. A girl in a skirt. Curled into a tight ball as she lay on the damp, concrete terrace.
‘Mariko?’ I said. ‘Mariko?’
I stared for a moment longer. Then, ignoring the fanatic twitching of Mrs Tanaka’s curtains, I ran to see if she was all right.
13
MARY
The Saturday morning workforce is caffeinated and deodorized, sharp of collar and mind. Lipsticked women in power suits overtake me, pinpricks of sweat breaking out on their powdered noses. Clean-shaven men jostle me aside, single-minded as salmon headed upriver to mate. I straggle in their midst, a pariah in last night’s dirty clothes, sangria and stomach acid in my hair.
The strap on my sandal has broken and every few paces it flies from my foot. I chase after it, weaving among the suits and briefcases, murmuring halfhearted apologies. As I bend to retrieve it someone knocks me from behind, sending me forwards, my fingertips breaking my fall. I scowl up through the knots in my hair. These people have their commutes down to the second. They aren’t going to stop for anyone, least of all a shoe-hunting foreigner with mascara smudges under her eyes. I walk on, my sandal clutched in my hand.
Next to the subway is the sunless, concrete hangar of a bus station. It takes my hungoverish brain a while to find the right stop, which has been hijacked by schoolboys duelling with badminton rackets. I stand next to a hunched old lady in a raincoat, who rocks a shopping trolley to and fro, as if the multipack of economy toilet paper it holds is a sleeping child. Next to her is a gruff old salaryman wearing a surgical mask, his brow worked into a ‘nobody mess with me’ frown. I want to bin my sandal, but hold onto it instead. It provides the distinction between girl with a broken shoe and mental patient on day release.
Buses chug in and out, rolling over the kanji signs painted in the bus lanes. A number 157 pulls up, shuddering with diesel sickness. The back door opens and an orderly queue materializes. By the time it is my turn to step up the bus is jam-packed, the c
eiling straps festooned with knuckles. I shoehorn myself in and grab a ticket. On these buses you don’t have to pay until the end of your journey. I could wait until then to own up about having no money, but fear of the transport police makes me shove and toe-tread my way to the driver.
‘Good morning,’ I say.
He blinks at me from behind his plastic partition.
‘I am very sorry to trouble you,’ I say, in the polite Japanese I learnt at university, ‘but my purse was stolen. Would you mind taking me a few stops for free?’
This is of some interest to two old men. ‘That foreigner’s purse was stolen,’ one remarks to the other, ‘and isn’t her Japanese good?’
The driver blinks again. ‘For free?’ he echoes. ‘Ah, well, let me see . . . er . . . Sorry, no, we don’t let people ride for free. Why don’t you go to the police and tell them your purse was stolen?’
The driver is boyish, clean-cut, possessed of a nervous tic and the kind of scrupulous honesty the world could do with more of. Except for now.
‘Oh, I don’t want to trouble the police,’ I say, confident my charm will wear him down yet. ‘I just want to go a few stops. Thank you. Sorry for the inconvenience.’
Passengers at the back of the bus crane their necks to see what is going on. The driver gives a pained smile of genuine moral consternation. To admit me for free must go against whatever oath he had to take at Bus Driver Academy.
‘Er . . . no. I am sorry,’ he says. ‘No one is allowed to ride this bus for free.’
‘It’s only a couple of stops . . .’ I am not asking much. I just want to find Yuji, beat the crap out of him, then wash the vomit out of my hair.
‘I am very sorry,’ says the bus driver.
The exit opens with a hiss. Fine. On your conscience be it, I think, and step back down onto the tarmac.
Affixed to the pock-marked wall of the bus shelter is a map. I trace the route to Yuji’s town and estimate it an hour’s walk. I decide to follow the motorway and make a pit stop at the imitation American diner to scrub up in the bathroom. As I turn away from the map the old woman in the plastic mac hobbles towards me, her trolley trundling behind. She is hump-backed and snowy-haired. A fragile cage of osteoporosis. I see a lot of old women with mangled spines over here. Yuji says that they get like that from decades spent bent over in paddy-fields. She halts a few inches short of me.