Honeymoon to Nowhere

by Akimitsu Takagi

  “That’ll suit me fine. It’s a nice day—and I don’t par­ticularly like crowded places.”

  “Well, what d’you say we go to Mukogaoka Recreation Grounds?”

  “Okay, that’ll do.” She couldn’t help feeling a bit disappointed. If he had to find excuses from the start for not knowing what to do, what would happen later? Though perhaps it was natural he’d be over-anxious or supercautious, this being their first real date.

  They went to Shinjuku station and caught an Odakyu-line train. On the way to the recreation grounds they said very little, and even on arrival walked around for a while in silence. Being a weekday, there weren’t many people around.

  Etsuko found his unsophisticated style oddly relaxing rather than awkward and certainly not boring. She recalled her father’s lecture about the difference between passion and affection and decided her feeling for him, if any, didn’t fit into either of those categories. But then, what was it? Friendship? Was that possible between a man and a woman who had only met three times before?

  “Shall we sit down?” he asked and promptly flopped down on a bench.

  Etsuko followed him. The sky was blue as far as she could see; the leaves on the trees were turning red, and the wind was already cold. He took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one with a queer-looking oil lighter that seemed to be a survivor from another age. There wasn’t a soul around, and everything was quiet.

  He slowly blew out the smoke, and said, “Have you ever been in love?”

  “I guess so,” she said, forcing a smile to cover up the stir caused by his unexpected question. She didn’t feel like telling him a lie. “It was only a one-sided thing—hopeless from the start . . . Why do you ask?”

  “I just had a feeling you might have been through something like that. Are you still concerned about him?”

  She hesitated for a moment. “He’s already married.”

  He smoked in silence for a while, then began to talk, almost in a whisper, pausing between each sentence as if thinking aloud.

  “I myself have a rather unpleasant memory . . . I suppose it could be described as unrequited love for want of a better word . . . Soon afterward I went to New York on a Fulbright scholarship. I thought it’d give me a chance to turn over a new leaf . . .” He laughed briefly but bitterly. A muscle in his cheek twitched, giving him a strangely twisted expression. “But I just couldn’t patch up the hole in my mind . . . The United States is the home of manage­ment studies, and I was certainly learning a great deal, but somehow I never felt quite fulfilled . . . Of course, I was living in a strange country without friends and had to rack my brains to produce even the simplest sentence in Eng­lish—none of this helped. I can well understand why stu­dents studying abroad suffer breakdowns—even develop suicidal tendencies.”

  “Yes, it’s not so hard to imagine how they must feel.”

  “So I used to go for long walks on my own whenever I had time to spare. I must have been trying to wear out my youth together with my shoe-soles . . . And I had this per­verse desire to go into places like the slum areas of Harlem and the Bowery—places most people would want to keep well away from. Perhaps I could sniff the smell of tragedy in such places, watching people thwarted by fate shuffling on without hope . . .”

  Listening to him Etsuko wondered if his morbid state of mind at the time could have been caused solely by that unhappy love affair. Perhaps there had been another, more compelling reason. It seemed to her that somewhere along the line his psyche must have absorbed a very se­vere blow. Otherwise why should a scholar—a man of reason and logic—allow himself to sink to such depths of despair after achieving his ambition to study in the United States?

  He said, “Now that I think back, I might have been sub­consciously trying to sustain my tragic mood. If you’re exposed to grief long enough, you can become addicted to it, you know. You begin to feel something’s missing when­ever you’re without sadness. And once this happens, sad­ness becomes a kind of queer delight . . .”

  Etsuko began to feel strangely disturbed. Hadn’t his words quite accurately described her own condition over the past year? “. . . I’m sure if I hadn’t been able to snap out of it in time, I would’ve entered on a course of self-destruction. But one day I discovered a marvellous remedy for un­requited love.”

  “A remedy for unrequited love?” She looked at him incredulously, her mouth slightly open.

  “Yes,” he said and quickly rose to his feet. “Would you like to come to my apartment at Setagaya? I’ll give you that medicine—I’ve brought it back with me from the United States. It’s really effective, not only against love-sickness, but against all sorts of other miseries as well.”

  “It wouldn’t be alcohol, or some drug, by any chance?” Her smile, meant to prove she had a sense of humor, was laced with suspicion.

  “No, it isn’t the sort of thing you’d take into your mouth.” He laughed, and the same muscle in his cheek oddly twitched again. “Let’s go then.”

  Go to the apartment of a man she hardly knew? For a woman of her upbringing it was like leaping into the dark from the stage of Kiyomizu Temple.

  Her mind was racing, trying to assess what he had just said. Did it have a double meaning? Was there a lewd allusion in it? The idea frightened her, but somehow it also made her excited. And above all, her curiosity was becoming uncontrollable. Finally she told herself this man wouldn’t be capable of anything improper.

  “All right, but only for a minute,” she said in a low voice, and got up from the bench.

  Yoshihiro Tsukamoto’s apartment was about five minutes’ walk from Setagaya Daita station on the Odakyu line. It was number 301, occupying the eastern corner of the top floor in a fairly new three-story concrete building.

  “Please come in,” he said. “It’s in a mess, as usual.”

  Glancing around inside Etsuko thought he hadn’t been exaggerating. There was general confusion in typical bachelor fashion. Obviously nobody had been doing any cleaning for days, but otherwise the place looked quite comfortable. It consisted of a Japanese room about twelve feet by nine feet, a western room of the same size, kitchen with dining nook, and a bathroom and toilet.

  He picked up a couple of newspapers from an arm­chair in the western room and asked her to sit down.

  “Quite a nice apartment you’ve got here,” she said.

  “Well, it may be a bit extravagant for a single man, but I thought it’d save me shifting again when I get married.”

  Suddenly there was a lump in her throat she couldn’t swallow. “Are you getting married soon?” She gave a cool smile, but a quaver in her voice gave her away.

  There was just a hint of amusement in his eyes as he gazed at her for a while. “It depends on her,” he said slowly and meaningfully. “But I don’t think she’s quite ready for it yet.”

  She shifted her glance to the coarse carpet square on the floor. The lump was gone from her throat, and now she was conscious of her quickening heartbeat.

  He said, “I haven’t anything nice to offer, but would you like a cup of tea?”

  “Yes, I’d love one.”

  “It won’t take me a minute.”

  “Let me make it.”

  “Okay, if you insist . . . Tea bags and sugar are on the top shelf, cups and saucers in the cupboard. And while you’re making it, I’ll try to find that thing—the remedy for love-sickness.”

  He grinned mysteriously, and she liked the childish delight he took in whatever it was. As he opened the paper door to the Japanese room, she caught a glimpse of a low table covered with books and notepaper and a heap of books stacked all along one side of the wall.

  Then she was boiling the water in the kitchen, still conscious of the throbbing of her heart. A teacher of business management. Hm. He was so different from a lawyer. She could probably get along with him fine. Her nature seemed rather s
uited to the role of wife to a modest scholar . . .

  The thought made her blush, but she couldn’t control her imagination. She saw herself living with him in this apartment, listening to his voice on a quiet evening, leaning against his arm outstretched on the back of the settee, his hand just around her shoulder, gently drawing her closer to him, and she yielding to his touch—his other hand, moving slowly along her thigh . . .

  Then she felt that sweet weakness touching her loins again, until she had to press her knees together to stop them trembling. And suddenly she had the strange notion she had known Yoshihiro for a long time . . .

  When she returned from the kitchen with the tea, she saw a little black doll on the table. It had a woeful expres­sion on its face, and in its hand was a heart broken in two. She had never seen a doll like that before.

  “Goodness me,” she said, “where did you get this from?”

  “This is the medicine I was talking about. It’s pow­ered by battery and is known as the heartbreak doll.” He patted it affectionately on the cheek. “This is the sort of gimmick the Americans like. I bought it in a stall some­where around Coney Island one night—to the ear-shattering accompaniment of Heartbreak Hotel by Elvis Presley.”

  The doll was sitting on a grey base which housed the battery and a tiny water tank. Yoshihiro switched on the mechanism, and the little Negro doll came to life. Big tear­drops fell from his eyes, some running down his miserable face, while his hands were frantically trying to put together the two halves of the broken heart.

  “Isn’t he clever? When I first saw him doing this I felt as if I was looking at my own ridiculous self, and I couldn’t help laughing till tears were running from my own eyes.” He opened his hands and awkwardly held them out toward the performing doll. “Just look at him—how he’s trying to put his silly heart together.”

  His arms still outstretched, he slowly twisted his face into a grin in preparation for a chuckle, which soon swelled into full-blown laughter.

  Etsuko couldn’t quite see what was so funny about the doll, but she had an almost hysterical desire to adjust to his mood. She stared at him blankly for a moment and then, as if it had been a long time welling, began to laugh with him.

  Then suddenly the laughter died on his lips and his face became hesitant and pleading. He turned his out­stretched arms toward her, as if asking for reassurance and comfort.

  At that moment she was terribly conscious of how she looked, what she was wearing, how she stood there. She thought, I don’t know what made you take notice of me in the first place—what made you like me more than others—but I know I’ve been waiting to be touched by someone like you, to be held close . . . She slipped into his arms and immediately put her hands up his back. Being so much shorter than he, her head just fitted in under his chin.

  She didn’t expect him to kiss her, and he didn’t—he just held her tight, pressing her face against his chest. Her lips felt his skin through his shirt, and as she drew in the scent of his body, a flash of desire mixed with poignant affection swept through her, until her loins felt all weak and churned up, and she was aware of a dampness between her thighs.

  “I don’t think I need that doll anymore,” he whispered into her hair.

  “Yoshihiro . . .” She took a deep breath, fighting off the urge to open her knees and wrap one leg around him.

  Then the doorbell began to ring.

  They pulled apart, almost guiltily, and she hurriedly adjusted her hair and dress while he went to answer the door.

  “Who the hell is it, at this time of day?” His voice was vibrant with irritation. He walked through the dining area toward the entrance.

  Etsuko watched him through the open door with maudlin eyes, her senses still in a turmoil, thinking it must be some bill collector, or perhaps the telegram boy. So she was surprised, even frightened, to see a man of twenty-seven or twenty-eight push Yoshihiro to one side and walk confidently into the apartment.

  The man looked definitely unpleasant. His eyes were sharp and cold with a lot of white showing in them, his lips were cruelly thin, and a knife scar like an earthworm ran along his left cheek. It was the sort of face that would have fitted any Tokyo gangster, only Etsuko felt this one had an additional quality—somehow it radiated a cor­rupted intelligence that made it look even more uncanny.

  “Aah, you have a visitor—and a lady at that?” The man spoke insolently, leering at her through the open door, “Well, well, what d’you know? I hope I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

  His glance made her flesh creep—she felt as if a centipede had just crawled over her bare breasts. Who was this man? What did he want? What was his relation­ship to Yoshihiro?

  “You’ve certainly come at a most inconvenient time,” Yoshihiro said, hardly able to control his anger. “Could you come back later—please?”

  Etsuko couldn’t see Yoshihiro’s face from where she stood, but she sensed his distress from the tone of his voice.

  “I’m sorry,” the man said, “it’d be just as inconvenient for me to come back later. I’m about to leave town—I want to have a word with you now.”

  After that they lowered their voices, and Etsuko couldn’t catch a single word. But a little later she noticed Yoshihiro take something out of his pocket and give it to the stranger.

  Raising his voice now in mock apology, the man said, “I’m sorry to butt in like this.” He looked at Etsuko with a lewd grin on his face. “Please forgive me, miss—and have a good time, huh?”

  Then he was gone, and Yoshihiro returned to her, his shoulders sagging, his face still pale with anger. “I’m terribly sorry about this,” he muttered.

  “Who is he?”

  “Hiroshi Watanabe, a distant relative of mine . . . He’s a complete no-hoper—turns up every now and then to borrow money from me.” He forced a bitter smile.

  “Well, that’s nothing unusual,” she said soothingly. “Every family has its black sheep. I know this from my father who often has to deal with such people in his practice.”

  Her words were meant to reassure him, and perhaps they did, but they certainly didn’t help her at all. Her mind was loaded with apprehension and doubt. If the man’s relationship to him was what he had told her, then there was no reason for him to become so pale and upset. Moreover, the man had acted far too arrogantly for one who had only come to borrow some money . . .

  Yoshihiro didn’t offer any further information, and she decided to drop the subject. If he had been telling the truth, then there were certainly some queer characters in his family, she thought. But what right did she have at this stage to pry into his personal affairs, anyway?

  She looked out the window into the gathering darkness and said, “It’s getting late—I’d better be going . . . Thank you very much for the afternoon.” By now her previous passionate mood was replaced by a deep chill.

  Yoshihiro didn’t try to stop her and merely offered to see her off to the station.

  On her way home that evening, Etsuko searched her soul with complete detachment—without being in any way influenced by her physical needs. And she discovered the tender beginnings of a new affection in one compart­ment and the slow gathering of a poisonous suspicion in another.

  Etsuko’s third date with Yoshihiro went off without any mishap. This time the emphasis was on the mind, and theirs were duly drawn closer together. Meanwhile, to face Higuchi alone was becoming increasingly painful to her.

  Her fourth date with Yoshihiro followed on November 26—again commencing at the Cafe Pensées, which was very close to Chiyoda University and was regularly used by the academic staff there.

  When she entered the shop right on half past four, she found Yoshihiro already there, having a cup of coffee with a tall man about his own age. She hesitated for a moment, but he beckoned to her, and then she joined their table.

  “This is Mr. Tatsu
o Kawaji, a lecturer in the Depart­ment of Law at our university,” Yoshihiro said. “We’ve been close friends ever since our student days. Among other things, we shared all the hardships of the boat club—always as reserves, never quite making the top . . .”

  Etsuko thought Kawaji looked much more like a university lecturer than Yoshihiro. He was properly dressed, wore strongly framed glasses and had a rather stern expression. But when he smiled his face softened, and his voice was far more gentle than expected.

  “How d’you do,” he said. “Tsukamoto talks quite a lot about you—you seem to be always on his mind.”

  “I hope everything he says is good.”

  “Oh, naturally. He thinks there isn’t another one like you in the whole world . . . By the way, he told me your father is Mr. Ogata, the former prosecutor.”

  “Yes, he resigned from the Criminal Affairs Division about ten years ago and has been in private practice ever since.”

  “I’ve met him once, but he wouldn’t remember me, of course—I was only a kid then.”

  “Are you specializing in criminal law?”

  “My special field is the Criminal Procedure Code, but I also have to lecture on the Criminal Code. At a private university they usually pay you less and make you work twice as hard.” He smiled wryly and looked up, and then said, “Oh, no.”

  A woman of about forty, dressed in a gay kimono, wafted toward them. She had slanting eyes and looked quite beautiful for her age.

  “Hello there,” she called out in a strident voice. “Would you excuse me if I borrowed Mr. Tsukamoto for a few minutes? It’s to do with the next function of the Economics Department’s social committee.”