The Lonesome Bodybuilder

by Yukiko Motoya

  I was checking that the drafty living-room window was properly closed so I could go to sleep, when I thought I heard the faint cry of a dog. I raised my head. Was it the wind howling? With a storm lamp and a shovel, and with the other dogs in tow, I made my way through the snow toward the well.

  The bucket was rattling against the pulley as the wind blew. I stopped a few paces from the well and raised the lamp. “Pastrami?” I said in a small voice, almost to myself. “Pastrami?”

  I thought I heard the keening cry of a dog in distress.

  “Pastrami, are you alive?” I called again.

  This time I could definitely make out the dog crying. I flung myself toward the well. In the lamplight I could see Pastrami, getting up on the ice! I left the lamp and the dogs, retrieved a chainsaw from the garage, and returned to the cabin. I sawed off the ladder that led to the attic, getting showered in sawdust, and loaded it on the red sled that I used for transporting firewood. Once I was back at the well, with the aid of some of the dogs, I lowered the ladder into the well, careful not to break the ice, and called the dog’s name. I wanted him to take hold of the ladder somehow. But Pastrami only looked up at me with his tongue hanging out, and wouldn’t make a move.

  The ice at the base of the well seemed thick, and gave no sign of cracking when I tapped the ladder on it. I screwed up my courage and tentatively climbed over the edge, then gingerly stepped onto the ladder. Slowly, cautiously, I descended. Pastrami wagged his tail weakly as I approached. Just as I’d put one foot on the ice and reached for him, there was the slight cracking sound of something giving way, and all the blood drained out of my body. With bated breath, I coaxed the stone-cold hunk of fur down into the front of my jacket. I put my hand on the ladder to climb back up, but stopped short. The other dogs had surrounded the rim of the well and were staring down at us, motionless.

  One dog moved its mouth clumsily just as the wind howled. I thought I heard the dog say, “Good enough.”

  Terrified, I found myself on the verge of laughter.

  “Good enough?” I said. “For what?”

  Beyond the still forms of the dogs looking down at us, I saw clouds being blown across the sky. Pastrami, who had been keeping still inside my jacket, yapped, as though remembering that he was a dog.

  It was a pain having to go down the mountain, but my friend was adamant about keeping stocked on certain things. I made up my mind to go to town for the first time in a week. When I got to the garage, Pastrami was waiting beside the car door, looking fully recovered and eager to come along.

  “No, stay home,” I said. After what I’d seen last time, I thought it better to leave him behind. I drove down the mountain roads carefully, and saw that Christmas decorations were up all around town. It must be that time of year already. As I looked around, mulling over my long string of holiday-season social failures, I noticed that something was a little off.

  It was people’s expressions—they seemed haggard, somehow. Some were constantly glancing behind themselves in fear. An elderly person sitting on a bench had the puffy face of someone who’d been up crying all night. There were few cars on the road, and every house had its curtains drawn. Was I imagining it? Even the overly cheerful Christmas decorations gave the impression that the town was desperately trying to avert its eyes from something upsetting.

  The shop assistant in the fruit-and-vegetable section wasn’t around. Normally, I’d have been relieved, but this time it bothered me, so I asked the woman restocking the frozen foods what had happened. “Yes, that boy—he quit.” Quit? All of a sudden? The woman gave me a long look. I thought I detected wariness and irritation in her eyes and quickly walked away. For some reason, the dog food had been moved, even though the cat food was still in the same place. I thought about asking where they’d put it, but I didn’t feel like engaging that woman again.

  The older man at the gas station with whom I always exchanged a few words wasn’t there, either.

  “Is he not working today?” I asked the young attendant in the Santa hat as he handed me my change. I’d gotten him to put a plastic container of diesel in the trunk for me.

  “Mm-hm.” He nodded ambiguously. There it was again. Each time I mentioned someone who wasn’t there, I could sense irritation rise in the townspeople’s eyes.

  I was absorbed in a poster for a Christmas party—FORGET ALL YOUR TROUBLES!—when I felt the young man staring at me. “He said I could ask him if I ever needed anything. I was counting on it,” I said, almost to myself.

  “Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” said the young man, batting away the pompom on his Santa hat.

  “Do you mean that? I might take you up on it.” I hoped my eagerness to get back up the mountain wasn’t showing on my face.

  “Sure.” He trotted inside to the cash register to bring me a pale pink flyer. “The charges for the services are all on here, if you’d like to take it with you.”

  I thanked him and rolled up the window, but one more thing was weighing on my mind. I rolled the window back down and asked offhandedly, “Do you deal with dogs?”

  “Dogs?” he said. There was a pause, and he pointed at the bottom of the flyer. “You can see about dogs at the bottom there.”

  I stopped for a red light outside the police station. I was contemplating the sign in large print on the noticeboard—FOR THE GOOD OF THE TOWN, THEY’VE GOT TO BE PUT DOWN—when a huge truck behind me blasted its horn.

  After that, I spent most of my waking hours at my desk, because I really had to knuckle down to my work. It required bottomless reserves of concentration. Several jobs were already complete and framed, and lined up along the attic wall, but even when I looked at those, I didn’t understand in the slightest what made people want to pay so much for them. But there was no need for me to understand. The thing that mattered was that having this work let me avoid dealing with people. The thing was, the more progress I made, the more time I spent dreading when I would have to leave this place.

  I was having a leisurely soak in the bath for the first time in a while, feeling good about the amount of work I’d gotten done, when it occurred to me that I hadn’t had a phone call in a few days. When I looked at the calendar in the kitchen, I saw it was four days past Tuesday, when he always rang. I checked the time, which was only eight at night, and decided to ring him myself. No answer. No matter how many times I tried, I didn’t even get through to the answering machine. Had something happened? He was conscientious, not like me. When he’d had appendicitis, he’d left me a message letting me know he’d be in surgery and wouldn’t be answering his phone for eight hours—that was the kind of person he was. It could be that the phone had actually rung, many times, and I’d been too engrossed in the work to notice. I checked the calendar again, and was taken aback. It was December 31!

  I decided to do something about the draft from the living-room window before the arrival of the new year. I got some putty and pressed it into the window frame. Then I noticed the pale pink flyer on the floor beneath the coat rack. I sat down on the sofa with the dogs and looked through the list of services available, just in case. The prices seemed a little high, but I could see myself calling them in an emergency. There was no entry for “Retrieval of animals in wells,” although there was one for “Recovery of dead birds in chimneys.” Farther down, the item “Dog walking” had been heavily crossed out. I recalled the exchange with the young man at the gas station. The last item on the list was even more mysterious.

  “Extermination of dogs.”

  Perhaps they meant feral dogs, I thought as I stroked the heads of the white dogs. But surely that sort of thing would normally be left to the public health department. I suddenly remembered the strange snow tools, like big sharp forks, that I’d seen propped beside the winter tires at the gas station. What could they have been for? The dog I was petting pricked up its ears, barked menacingly, and leapt onto the flyer, ripping it to shreds. “Stop it!” I said, but then the
other dogs caught the scent of the paper and, crouching down ready to pounce, started howling and growling as if they’d gone mad. Yap yap, yap yap yap!

  I calmed them down, got up from the sofa, and thought about ringing him again. But for some reason, I already knew he wouldn’t answer, and instead I dialed the number for my parents’ place, for the first time in a long time. No one picked up, despite it being New Year’s Eve. Just to make sure, I tried the police. No response. The fire department. No response. I dialed every number I could think of, but all I heard was the phone ringing, over and over.

  I got my jacket from the coat rack, and with car keys in hand headed to the garage. The dogs followed and tried to get in the car. I told them I was just going down to have a look around the town, but this didn’t satisfy them.

  You want to come too?

  Yap yap!

  But I can’t take all of you!

  Yap yap yap! The dogs went on barking as if they were broken.

  It took an hour to walk down to the foot of the mountain, white dogs in tow. When I got there the town was deserted.

  There were still Christmas decorations everywhere. I heard pet dogs crying from inside their houses, so I pried open the doors and let them loose, but the white dogs didn’t respond to them in the slightest. The newly freed dogs ran off in a flash, as if to get away from the white dogs as quickly as they could.

  I spent a long time wandering around the town, and ascertained that there wasn’t a single person there. At the gas station, I found the words OUR TOWN sloppily spray-painted on a wall. Our town. I remembered that once, many years ago, I’d asked Santa Claus for a present: to wake up and have the whole world to myself.

  I gathered as much food and fuel as I could carry, and headed back to the cabin with the dogs.

  The following day, I sat and worked in the attic with the magnifying glass and tweezers, and went walking with the dogs over the snowy slopes when I needed a break. There was no sign of anyone approaching the cabin. I spent the next day the same way, and again the day after that. Watching the white dogs hunt, swimming gracefully under the ice, I could be engrossed for hours. When I ran out of food, I went down to the town and procured what I wanted from the unattended shops. I slowly became dingy and faded, but the dogs stayed as white as fresh snow.

  One day, while I was watching them play in the snow from the attic window, I took the hunting rifle from the cupboard and let off three shots in their direction. The dogs stiffened in a way I’d never seen them do before, looked toward me, and then scattered into the mountain as though to meld into the glistening snow. The day hinted at the arrival of spring.

  I leaned out the window and yelled, “Sorry!” at the top of my voice. “I won’t do that again! Come home!”

  That night, as the snow fell silently, I slept standing by the windowsill huddled with the dogs, who had come back. As I reveled in the sensation of being buried in their warm flesh, I thought, I’ll be leaving this place tomorrow.

  The Straw Husband

  Her husband ran lightly ahead of her, almost as if he were pacesetting a race. He was dressed in his favorite team’s soccer jersey and knee-length shorts. His legs were sheathed down to the ankles in the compression tights they’d bought together at the sporting goods store, but from the gap between them and his sneakers, two or three strands of dry straw were poking out. The asphalt surface of the wide running track in the park was littered with sawdust-like material in his wake, but Tomoko skillfully avoided it as she tuned in to what he was saying.

  “Good, nice and tall now. Try not to lift your feet—it’s better to almost brush them forward just barely over the ground. You’ll get less tired that way. Keep your elbows tucked in to your body. And don’t stick your belly out.”

  “Okay,” Tomoko said, wondering what to focus on first. It was nice of him to be so excited about teaching her to run, but giving her all those instructions at the same time was actually counterproductive. Reminding herself to keep a straight face, she let her husband’s explanations wash over her, and moved her attention to the leaves on the trees stretching overhead. They were like an endless carpet in the hallway of some elegant mansion. Green. Yellow. Red. Evidently the trees all changed color at different times. It felt luxurious to be holding all three colors in her field of vision at once.

  “Look how pretty it is,” she said.

  He looked up. “You’re right,” he said. “Aren’t you glad we came?”

  “Yeah. Thanks for getting me out here.”

  “Studies have proved that performance suffers when you don’t take breaks.”

  Tomoko copied her husband, who was swinging his arms rhythmically, and looked at the pale, skinny, sticklike arms that peeked out of her running clothes. She needed to exercise more, it was true. She’d been putting in such long hours working that her fitness had suffered. Particularly her leg muscles. Now that she was out running, she couldn’t ignore it. It was like having to drag along bloodless pieces of doweling.

  “The leg muscles are one of the most prone to losing mass, of course. You should be walking daily, whether you go out for a stroll or even just for shopping.” He sounded like a teacher lecturing a student.

  Yes, Tomoko thought; that was definitely true. But what could her husband really know? Running into the cold wind, she thought back to the exhilaration of being a student and putting snow against her eyelids to keep herself awake while she studied for exams. Squinting into the clear autumn sunlight, she gazed at the figure of her husband running just ahead of her. How could he possibly know what it was like, when he didn’t have a single muscle on him?

  She saw a couple approaching, dressed in understated matching duffle coats and walking their dog. “Hey, look. Those two are actually old enough to be grandparents. So adorable,” she said, in a low, affectionate voice.

  Her husband slowed his pace. “Very elegant,” he said happily.

  Just like we want to be when we’re older, right? Tomoko thought, but she didn’t say it aloud, because she was sure her husband was thinking just the same thing.

  Six months since they’d gotten married, she was only more certain that the path to happiness was laid out ahead of them. From where did she get this satisfying feeling that they had avoided the common pitfalls of choosing a partner? Theirs was a marriage that hadn’t necessarily been welcomed by their loved ones, but now she felt that the wild birds were twittering to congratulate them on having made the right choice.

  As she passed the old couple on the path, Tomoko tried to imprint their image into her mind. She and her husband would no doubt become like them. In the weekday park, everything shone brightly and was peaceful. The sunlight spilling through the trees. The fountains. Grass. And her straw husband. She sighed with happiness at her blessed life.

  They spent the next fifteen minutes doing a lap around the spacious park, slow enough to avoid putting any strain on their hearts. Within the park’s extensive grounds, everyone was enjoying themselves. A couple on a date, peering into a flower bed. Families relaxing on the grass. A student rehearsing lines on a bench, a cameraman shooting a scene as he scattered a pile of fallen leaves around a girl . . .

  They were just past the park’s dog run. Her husband pointed to a patch of grass and said, “Let’s get to there and then take a breather.”

  Tomoko was already fast-walking more than running. “Okay,” she said, summoning the remains of her willpower.

  “I’ll grab us something to drink. Go do some stretching.”

  Tomoko watched him sprint off toward some vending machines, and made for the grassy area, dead leaves crunching underfoot. A deserted, slightly balding patch of ground—that was the spot. When she sat down and arched her back as far as she could, her gaze met a totally cloudless sky. She closed her eyes against the brightness, and became aware of the sensation of her blood coursing through her. Her body had been tense from pressure at work, but it felt looser now thanks to the run.

>   By the time her breathing had settled, her husband came into sight from between the trees. He seemed to have gone a long way to find a vending machine. Unaware that he was being watched, he was walking slowly toward the patch of grass, clutching a plastic bottle.

  From that distance, his jerky movements stood out a little, but Tomoko didn’t mind. Her husband was made of straw—yes, that straw, stalks of dried rice or wheat, plant matter used as fodder for farm animals, or for their bedding—tied into bundles and rolled into a human shape.

  Tomoko had married him of her own free will. Some of her friends had advised her to reconsider, but most people didn’t even seem to notice that he was straw. What Tomoko had liked about him was that, as straw, he was kinder and more positive than anyone she knew. Of course, at the start, there’d been days when she’d barely managed to swallow food, sick with worry that they were too different, that she’d rushed into things. But now she no longer faltered in her conviction that her instinct hadn’t led her astray.

  The soccer jersey that her husband was wearing was more vibrant than anything else in the park. It was a beautiful yellow, representing the sun, which was the team’s emblem. Meanwhile, her husband was more akin to a brush painting of a dead branch, and Tomoko couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the contrast.

  She saw her husband put the bottle down on the ground and leap up to catch hold of a pine bough. He did a pull-up, raising himself easily, and then resumed walking as though nothing had happened, picking up something from the ground and shoving it in his pocket as he did. An acorn, Tomoko thought. Or some insect.