The Lonesome Bodybuilder

by Yukiko Motoya

  “Tell me where you’ve been today,” my husband said, having moved me to the table and eagerly poured me a beer.

  He sounded almost like a wife, I thought. “To Hasebo’s new place.”

  Beside me, I thought I saw my husband nod. But maybe he didn’t nod—maybe he was just staring at me. I felt an uneasy rustling down the left side of my body as I picked up my chopsticks. I moistened my mouth with the pleasantly foamy beer and picked up a fritter as I was told. No rice, no miso soup—my husband was only interested in deep frying. “That’s bamboo shoot. And that one, that’s chum with yam bulbs,” he told me proudly. “I’ve made a light ponzu sauce for you tonight.” My husband said his digestion wasn’t so good lately, and he hardly touched the platter, making me eat most of it.

  I put the fritter in my mouth resignedly. But to my surprise, the moment I tasted the first piece, my appetite came back with a vengeance, and I found myself reaching for the next fritter even before I’d swallowed the first. Perhaps my body was starting to need the oil. I tossed one fritter after another into my mouth. Washed down with beer, they made me feel warm and excited inside. I’d keep eating them forever if I could. I got so absorbed in moving my mouth I couldn’t think about anything else.

  “It’s nice you’re getting to be more like me,” I heard my husband murmur as he poured himself another beer.

  What? I thought, but my mouth was full of fritter and I couldn’t respond.

  I hurriedly tried to swallow, but he said, “Try this on the next one,” and pressed the yuzu-chili paste on me, and as I chewed the next fritter, I found that I couldn’t for the life of me recall what he’d said or what I’d wanted to say in reply.

  Belly full, I let myself be led by the hand to the couch, and gazed at the variety show with him. “It’s so easy being with you,” my husband said, as though intoning some kind of spell, so I replied, “You’re right.” I hadn’t even stopped to think about what I was saying.

  When I woke up and looked in the mirror, I saw that my face had finally begun to forget who I was.

  I guessed my features had just been caught off guard that day. When I peered closer, they rushed to reassemble, as though to say, Oh, shit. But it was as if they couldn’t remember their original placement, and as a result, the final impression was a little off-kilter.

  I took another, harder look in the mirror. The eyes were a little too far apart, making the whole face look curiously stretched out.

  I was becoming like my husband.

  Trying to pull myself together, I washed my face, sluicing it repeatedly with water. Then I used my fingers to smooth on a stronger sunscreen than I normally used. There was a voice in my head that said, What’s the point of going to all this effort over a face that was neither here nor there to begin with? But I managed to ignore it, and left the apartment just on time.

  When I took the car out and drove it up the ramp from the complex’s underground car park, Kitae and her husband were waiting by the exit at the top, as we’d arranged.

  I got out of the driver’s seat and said, “Thanks for meeting me,” and bowed to them. “Thanks” isn’t really the right word, I thought as the words left my mouth, but I didn’t know what else to say.

  Kitae’s husband seemed to be in the same boat. “No, thank you,” he said, and bowed much more politely than I had. Next to him, Kitae was cradling the soft pet carrier hanging from her shoulder as if it were her child.

  Seen close up, her husband was smaller than I’d imagined. As with Kitae, all the color seemed to have fallen neatly out of his hair. And because he was dressed in pale shades, he again reminded me of a statue of the jizo standing on the side of some country road.

  “San, dear, this is my husband, Arai.” She turned to her husband. “Arai, this is my friend San,” she said, almost carelessly. “San’s had cats for a long time, since she was small. She understands them much better than we do. So we can leave it up to her, Arai, and everything will be fine.”

  Kitae then turned to the mesh panel in the pet carrier, and leaned down to it. “Sansho, you don’t need to be scared either. San’s going to find a wonderful mountain for you.”

  I was a little daunted by the weight of the responsibility that seemed to have been placed on me, but I got the two of them into the back seat and said, “Okay, here we go,” and loaded the GPS with the address of the Young People’s Nature Camp in Gunma Prefecture that Senta had sent me. The estimated travel time was two and a half hours.

  “It’s nearer than I thought,” said Kitae. She leaned forward and looked closely at the GPS screen. “That means we can go visit anytime, if worse comes to worst.”

  Could they? It would take five hours to get there and back. I thought Mr. Arai might be more realistic about this, but he didn’t say anything, so I acted as if I hadn’t heard anything either. Just as we set off, Sansho gave a small cry inside the carrier, but I also pretended not to have heard that.

  Once we’d been on the Joshinetsu Expressway for a while, the mountain range came into view. Because it was a clear day, with what seemed like an impossibly high autumn sky, the profiles of the mountains stood out clearly, seeming to advance on us. The view was so impressive that I would have applauded, if not for the situation.

  We exited onto local roads and advanced toward the mountains, following the GPS. The houses, which had been clustered together, soon began to be spaced out, then became sporadic, and finally disappeared. As we climbed up an endless series of switchbacks, we found ourselves deep enough in the woods that I braced myself for animals leaping out onto the road at any moment. According to the GPS, the Young People’s Nature Camp was still farther ahead, but I found a gravel track and decided to follow it.

  Soon after getting in the car, Kitae had said she was going to open the pet carrier. She must have been holding Sansho on her lap the whole way.

  “Look! We’re in the mountains. What do you think?” Kitae was talking to Sansho. When the gravel track petered out into a narrow dirt path, I stopped the car. It didn’t seem to be a recognized road—the GPS screen showed a red arrow that indicated we should turn back.

  No one spoke until I said, “We’re here.”

  I was wondering whether or not to switch off the engine when Mr. Arai said to Kitae, almost in a whisper, “Hear that? We’re here.”

  “Uh-huh.” Kitae nodded but stayed in the back seat holding Sansho, head lowered.

  “Is it different from what you expected?” I twisted my body around to face Mr. Arai.

  He made a small smile, angling the corners of his eyes down, and shook his head. “Come on, Kitae,” he said. “You decided. You can’t change your mind now that we’ve come all this way.”

  Kitae said, “Yes, yes,” but didn’t raise her head.

  I said, “I’m going to have a look around,” and got out of the car. The second I opened the door, my body was enveloped by the natural chill of the mountain, and I found myself breathing in as deeply as I could. The air was humid and seemed to snuggle up against my skin. I retied the laces on my sneakers and walked ahead on the path.

  I could hear sounds of birds everywhere. Were they singing from the tops of the trees? No matter how hard I tried to train my ears on their voices, I couldn’t tell what direction they were coming from. I’d expected the mountains in fall to be cool, but because the sunlight was blocked by the trees, it was so cold that I was almost shivering. Between the tall trees and bushes, I could see clumps of scabrous gentian and hairless salvia. Perhaps there’d been dew on the leaves—I noticed my socks were wet, and turned back toward the parked car.

  It seemed that Mr. Arai was desperately trying to soothe Kitae. I couldn’t tell exactly from a distance, but I could see Kitae, still holding Sansho and refusing to look up, and Mr. Arai’s head moving as he was talking to her.

  I was hoping that one of us would say, Let’s go back home after all. There was no way Sansho was going to survive here. He’d have had more
of a chance at the local shrine. But Kitae had said, “If he’s near people, he’ll get hit by a car.” As a child, she had witnessed a neighbor’s cat try to cross the road and get flattened.

  I realized that by indulging Kitae’s ideas about “the mountains,” I’d started to subscribe to the idea that once we got here, Sansho would thrive. But it was clearly impossible. My husband is the one we should be returning to the mountains, I thought, remembering him at Machu Picchu, and how he’d moved about there as though he’d been brought back to life.

  I picked my way carefully through the trees back to the car, and found Kitae sitting on a nearby stump with the pet carrier on her knees.

  “How’s Sansho doing?” I asked, thinking to myself, Oh no, Mr. Arai’s managed to convince her.

  “Sansho—well, he seems to be quite calm about it all,” Kitae said, and pulled on the carrier’s zipper and peeled back the nylon flap that covered the top.

  “Sansho,” she called, and Sansho raised his head, sniffing. “See? We’re in the mountains now. Your new home. You can pee anywhere you want. Everywhere! You’re going to be happy here.”

  Sansho swiveled his ears and peered around cautiously, but after a while he stood up inside the bag and thrust the top half of his body out of the opening.

  He’s getting away, I thought, and almost as soon as I did, Kitae grabbed his head and pushed him back down inside the carrier.

  “No, no, no,” she said, looking like she might cry, and shook her head petulantly.

  Why don’t we just head home? The words were in my mouth, but I managed to hold them back. They’d be easy to say. But then what?

  Mr. Arai came back from his reconnaissance of the area and looked at Kitae stooped over on the stump, and me standing like a log beside her. He seemed to comprehend everything.

  “Kitae, let me take care of it. I’ll go leave him over there,” he said calmly, as if he were telling her he’d lend a hand with the dishes.

  “Arai. Did you say ‘leave’ him?” Kitae snapped, but in a voice so weak I wouldn’t have imagined it belonged to her. The words seemed to take the last of her resolve, and after that she would only say, “Oh, no. Oh, no. Ah. Oh, no.”

  Mr. Arai gently lifted the carrier from Kitae’s lap, and turned to me. “I’ll just be a minute, then.”

  “Right, okay,” I said, and then added, “I’ll come with you.”

  Mr. Arai lowered his brows for a moment, looking concerned, and then glanced toward the back of Kitae’s head.

  “It’s fine. Go. That’s why we asked her to come,” she said, still looking down, and Mr. Arai nodded and started to walk off.

  When we were a little distance away, I thought I heard Kitae’s voice from behind us, saying, “Oh, ah,” but it sounded uncertain, and I didn’t know whether she was angry or relieved.

  The slender Mr. Arai strode up the mountain path ahead of me. Sansho, in the carrier hanging from his shoulder, must have weighed twelve pounds at least, but Mr. Arai followed the trail confidently, as though it were a walking route in a city park.

  I was frantically following, carrying the backpack Kitae had loaded into the trunk of the car. Thanks to the extra weight, I gulped at the air like a fish poking its face out of water.

  With each step, the soles of my sneakers sank into the soft ground. The deeper we went up the mountain, the more oxygenated the air seemed. I could feel the breathing of the trees, the soil, and the things that were turning back into soil.

  While I was distracted by the sound of insects, Mr. Arai, ahead of me, suddenly turned his face to one side like a wild animal. He seemed to have sensed something, and started climbing straight up the slope, easing through narrow gaps between trees. I followed with difficulty to a large rocky area where the ground leveled out. Water was flowing from one end.

  “A rock spring,” I said, out of breath. “How did you know?”

  “I grew up surrounded by mountains,” Mr. Arai said in a voice as clear as a bell, and carefully took the carrier off his shoulder and put it on the ground. “What do you think of this place?”

  It seemed safer than the surrounding area, with better visibility and good hiding places under the rocks, but also more dangerous, considering the possibility of other animals.

  “Seems good, I think,” I said haltingly. Nowhere was truly safe.

  Mr. Arai nodded briefly. “We’ll do it here.” And maybe out of kindness for how much I was sweating, he said, “Shall we sit down? There’s a good view.”

  Kitae’s backpack held a surprising number of items: dry cat food, canned food, plates, Sansho’s favorite blanket, toys, bottled water, a collapsible cat house made of nylon.

  “The other animals will notice Sansho straightaway if we leave these out,” Mr. Arai said, sitting down on a convenient rock, voicing exactly the thought that was in my head. “What was Kitae thinking of, a picnic?”

  “How long have you and she been married?” I asked, changing the subject even though I thought it might sound rude, so I wouldn’t have to think about Sansho inside the bag.

  “Married? Let’s see, I think we’re coming up to forty-five years.”

  “You got married young.”

  “I was twenty-five and Kitae was twenty-two, or thereabouts. I thought we could have waited a little longer, but you know how Kitae won’t budge once she’s set her mind to something.”

  “The two of you aren’t at all alike,” I said, and Mr. Arai seemed amused. Even though he didn’t laugh, I could see it in the depths of his eyes. He’d be a hard man to keep secrets from, something inside me said.

  “You know, I’ve seen you and your husband together before,” he said.

  “Really?”

  “Yes. But you seemed a little different then, I think.”

  “I’ve gained fifteen pounds,” I confessed, embarrassed, but Mr. Arai looked at me steadily, and quietly said, “Yes. That might be part of it, but I think you were also looking more . . . humanlike.”

  Humanlike. “I don’t look human now?” I said, laughing to cover up my shock at his startling words.

  “I’m sorry. That’s a funny thing to say when we’ve only just met. Please—it was just something that came to mind—don’t worry about it.”

  “No, it’s actually . . . It’s something I’ve noticed myself.”

  “It is?” Mr. Arai gazed at me again. I looked down at where the water welled up from the rock as though I were trying to pass unnoticed by some wild animal.

  “Kitae’s told you about the couple who became identical? The wife had come to me for advice, and in fact I was the one who suggested putting down a stone. It might be best if you were to place something between you and your husband too. Shall we?” Mr. Arai got up.

  Looking at his white shirt, which was still pristine even after walking so far, I stood hurriedly to follow him.

  As soon as she saw us coming back, Kitae jumped out of the car.

  “Arai! You must have gone a long way. Did you set Sansho free somewhere nice? He won’t be attacked by a bear, will he?” The skin around her eyes was puffy and red.

  “It’s all right. We found a good spot for him,” Mr. Arai said slowly, and patted her shoulder as though brushing off some dust.

  “Really? San, is it true? You found a good spot?”

  I nodded, lowering the backpack. “There were places to hide, and it looked surprisingly comfortable,” I said. In the end, I hadn’t actually witnessed Mr. Arai letting Sansho out of the bag. I’d waited a little distance away, pacing over tree roots and vaguely imagining I could evade some of the responsibility.

  Kitae continued to look mournful even once we were all back in the car. As I gripped the steering wheel, I could hear her sniffing and Mr. Arai murmuring something in a low voice, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying.

  “I don’t want fritters tonight,” I said as soon as I got home. I’d been trying to think of what I could put between me and my husband
, but I hadn’t come up with anything.

  “Oh. Why?” my husband said languidly. He already had the pan on the stove and was prepping the food with long chopsticks in hand as usual.

  “It makes me feel fuzzy.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “When I get fuzzy we can’t talk about anything important.”

  My husband dipped the tips of the chopsticks into the bowl of egg-and-flour mixture, and flicked them over the hot oil. “There’s no need to talk about important things when we’re at home, is there?” he said.

  “Then when are people who stay at home supposed to talk about them?” I said quickly. I had to face it today—I had to question him before I lost my human form.

  But the more anxious I felt, the more sluggish my husband seemed to become. “The thing is, San,” he said, adjusting the heat on the stove. “You keep saying we need to talk, but is that even true? Maybe you’d like to talk about important things. But do you have anything important to say?”

  I started to feel less sure of myself. I focused on feeling strength in my stomach. “What about having children? It kind of got put on hold, and we haven’t mentioned it since. How do you feel about it?”

  “How do you feel about it?” he said, and I found myself at a loss for words. “See, San? There isn’t really anything you want to talk to me about, is there?”

  “What about your ex-wife?” I said in desperation. But I knew as soon as I said it that it wasn’t a conversation I particularly wanted to have.

  “You’re like me, San. You don’t really want to think about anything, and there’s no need to pretend that you do,” my husband said, and took one of the ginger shoots lined up on the cutting board and dropped it into the pan. “We don’t want to have to face the big stuff, you and me. That’s why being with you is so easy.”

  You’re wrong, I wanted to say, but I couldn’t get the words out.

  “How could you have lived like this for four years otherwise?”