The Briefcase

by Hiromi Kawakami

  This was just what my life was like, after all. Here I was, trudging alone on an unfamiliar road, on some unfamiliar island, separated from Sensei—whom I thought I knew but didn’t know at all. There was no reason not to start drinking. I had heard that the island’s specialties were octopus, abalone, and giant prawns. I was going to eat a shitload of abalone. Sensei had invited me, so it ought to be his treat. And tomorrow when I’m so hungover I can’t walk, he can carry me on his back. I would totally forget about whatever notions I had momentarily entertained regarding what it might be like to spend time with Sensei.

  The lights under the guesthouse’s eaves were illuminated. Two large seagulls were perched on the roof. Hunched and still, they looked like guardian deities on the edge of the roof tiles. It was now completely dark and, without my noticing it, the seagulls’ cries had ceased. As I rattled open the front door of the guesthouse, I called out, I’m back. I heard a cheerful voice from inside say, Welcome back! The aroma of freshly cooked rice wafted toward me. Looking out from inside, it was pitch-black.

  Sensei, it’s dark, I murmured. Sensei, come back, it’s dark already. I don’t care if you’re still dwelling on your wife or whatever, just hurry back and let’s have a drink together. My earlier anger was now completely forgotten. We don’t have to be teatime companions, we can just be drinking buddies. I’d like nothing more than that. Hurry back now, I murmured over and over, out toward the dark night. I thought I saw Sensei’s silhouette in the dimness on the hill outside the guesthouse. But there wasn’t a silhouette at all, not even a shadow to be seen, only darkness. Sensei, hurry back, I would go on murmuring forever.

  The Island, Part 2

  “LOOK, TSUKIKO, THE octopus is floating to the top,” Sensei pointed out, to which I nodded.

  It was sort of like an octopus version of shabu-shabu. Thin, almost-transparent slices of octopus were submerged in a gently boiling pot of water, and then immediately plucked out with chopsticks when they rose to the surface. Dipped in ponzu sauce, the sweetness of the octopus melted in your mouth with the ponzu’s citrus aroma, creating a flavor that was quite sublime.

  “See how the octopus’s translucent flesh turns white when you put it in hot water,” Sensei chatted exactly the same way as if he and I were sitting and drinking at Satoru’s place.

  “It’s white, yes.” I, on the other hand, was decidedly unsettled. I had no idea whether I ought to smile or be quiet, or how I should behave at all.

  “But, just before, there’s a moment when it appears ever so slightly pink, don’t you see?”

  “Yes,” I replied quietly. Sensei looked at me with a bemused expression and then helped himself to three slices of octopus at once from the pot.

  “You’re awfully acquiescent tonight, Tsukiko.”

  Sensei had finally come down the hill after a really long time. The seagulls’ cries had fallen completely silent and the darkness had grown thick and dense. A really long time, I thought, but then again it may not have been more than five minutes. I had stood and waited for him at the guesthouse’s front door. He had returned, his footsteps light and not the least bit uncertain in the dark. When I called out to him, “Sensei,” he replied, “Ah, Tsukiko, I’m back.” As we headed into the guesthouse alongside each other, I said, “Welcome back.”

  “Such splendid abalone!” Sensei exclaimed as he lowered the flame under the pot of octopus shabu-shabu. Four abalone shells were lined up on a medium-sized plate, each shell filled with abalone cut into sashimi.

  “Have your fill, Tsukiko.”

  Adding a little wasabi, Sensei dunked a piece of abalone in soy sauce. He chewed it slowly. His mouth while chewing was the mouth of an old man. I chewed the abalone too. I hoped that my mouth was still that of a young woman, but if not, I was resigned to that too. I felt very strongly about it at that moment.

  Octopus shabu-shabu. Abalone. Mirugai. Kochi fish. Boiled shako. Fried giant prawns. They were served one after another. By now, the pace of Sensei’s chopsticks began to slow. He barely tipped his saké, taking small sips. I inhaled the rapid-fire offerings, drinking cup after cup without saying much of anything.

  “Are you enjoying the food, Tsukiko?” Sensei asked, as if he were indulging a grandchild with a voracious appetite.

  “It’s delicious,” I replied brusquely, then I repeated myself, this time with a bit more enthusiasm.

  By the time they brought out the cooked and pickled vegetables, both Sensei and I had eaten our fill. We decided not to have any rice, just some miso soup. The two of us finished our saké leisurely as we sipped the soup, rich with fish stock.

  “Well, is it about time to go?” Sensei stood up, holding his room key. I followed him to stand, but apparently the saké had had more of an effect than I realized and my feet were unsteady. I stumbled as I took a step, falling forward onto my hands on the tatami.

  “Oh, dear,” Sensei said, looking down at me.

  “Stop with your ‘Oh, dear’ and give me a hand!” I sort of shouted, and Sensei laughed.

  “There, now you sound like Tsukiko!” he said, holding out a hand. I took it and climbed the steps. We stopped outside Sensei’s room, which was halfway down the corridor. Sensei put his key in the lock. It made a clicking sound. I stood there, swaying in the hall, as I watched Sensei’s back.

  “You know, Tsukiko, the hot spring at this guesthouse is supposed to be quite good,” Sensei turned around to say.

  All right, I replied vacantly, still swaying.

  “Once you’ve had a moment, go take a bath.”

  All right.

  “It will sober you up a bit.”

  All right.

  “Once you’ve taken the waters, if the night is still long, come to my room.”

  This time, instead of replying All right again, my eyes widened. Huh?!? What do you mean by that?

  “I don’t mean anything by that,” Sensei answered, disappearing behind the door.

  The door closed before me and I was left standing in the corridor, now only slightly swaying. In my saké-addled mind, I ruminated about what Sensei had said. Come to my room. He had definitely said those words. But, if I went to his room, what exactly would happen? Surely we wouldn’t just be playing cards. Maybe we’d keep drinking. Then again, it was Sensei—he might suddenly suggest, “Let’s write some poetry,” or something like that.

  “Now, Tsukiko, don’t get your hopes up,” I muttered, heading for my own room. I unlocked the door and flipped on the light switch, and there in the middle of the room, my single bedding had been laid out. My luggage had been moved in front of the alcove.

  As I changed into a yukata and got ready for the bath, I repeated over and over, “Don’t get your hopes up, don’t get your hopes up.”

  THE HOT SPRING made my skin soft. I washed my hair, immersing myself in the bath over and over, and by the time I had painstakingly blown my hair dry in the changing room, to my surprise, more than an hour had passed.

  I went back to my room and opened the window, letting the night air rush in. The crashing of the waves sounded much louder now. I leaned against the window sash for a while.

  Since when had Sensei and I become close like this? At first, Sensei had been a distant stranger. An old, unfamiliar man who in the faraway beyond had been a high school teacher of mine. Even once we began chatting now and then, I still barely ever looked at his face. He was just an abstract presence, quietly drinking his saké in the seat next to mine at the counter.

  It was only his voice that I remembered from the beginning. He had a resonant voice with a somewhat high timbre, but it was rich with overtones. A voice that emanated from the boundless presence by my side at the counter.

  At some point, sitting beside Sensei, I began to notice the heat that radiated from his body. Through his starched shirt, there came a sense of Sensei. A feeling of nostalgia. This sense of Sensei retained the shape of him. It was dignified, yet tender, like Sensei. Even now, I could never quite get a hold on this sen
se—I would try to capture it, but the sense escaped me. Just when I thought it was gone, though, it would cozy back up to me.

  I wondered, for instance, if Sensei and I were to be together, whether that sense would temper into solidity. But then again, wasn’t a sensation just that kind of indistinct notion that slips away, no matter how you try to contain it?

  A large moth flew into my room, attracted by the light. It flitted about, scattering the scales from its wings. I pulled the cord on the lamp, and the bright white light of the bulb softened to an orange glow. The moth idly fluttered about before finally drifting back outside.

  I waited a moment, but the moth did not return.

  I closed the window, retied the obi on my yukata, applied a little lipstick, and grabbed a handkerchief. I went out into the corridor, trying not to make a sound as I locked the door. Several small moths had gathered around the light in the hallway. Before knocking on Sensei’s door, I took a deep breath. I pressed my lips together lightly, smoothed my hair with the palm of my hand, and then took another deep breath.

  “Sensei,” I called out, and from within I heard the reply, “It’s open.” I carefully turned the doorknob.

  Sensei was resting his elbows on the low table. He was drinking a beer, his back to the bedding that had been moved off to the side.

  “Is there no saké?” I asked.

  “No, there’s some in the refrigerator, but I’ve had enough already,” he said as he tilted a five-hundred-milliliter bottle of beer. The foam rose cleanly in his glass. I took a glass that was upside down on a tray on top of the refrigerator.

  Please, I said, holding it out in front of Sensei. He smiled and poured the same clean head of beer for me.

  There were a few triangular pieces of cheese wrapped in silver foil on the table.

  “Did you bring those with you, Sensei?” I asked, and he nodded.

  “You came prepared.”

  “I thought of it just as I was leaving and threw them in my briefcase.”

  The night was tranquil. The sound of the waves could be heard through the window. Sensei opened a second bottle of beer. The popping sound of the bottle opener echoed throughout the room.

  By the time we finished the second bottle, both of us had fallen silent. Every so often the sound of the waves grew louder.

  “It’s so quiet,” I said, and Sensei nodded.

  A little while later, Sensei said, “It’s very quiet,” and this time I nodded.

  The silver foil wrappers from the cheese had been peeled off and lay curled up on the table. I gathered the foil into a ball. I suddenly remembered how, when I was little, I had collected the silver foil from chocolate fingers and had fashioned a rather large ball out of them. I would carefully unfold each piece, flattening them out as best I could. Occasionally, I came across a gold wrapper, and I would set these aside. I had a vague memory of saving these in the bottom drawer of my desk, with the idea to use them as a Christmas tree topper. But then, when Christmas came round, I seem to recall that the gold paper had gotten buried under my notebooks and my modeling clay set, and had been crushed and wrinkled.

  “It’s so quiet.” Who knows how many times it was said, but this time Sensei and I had both said it at the same time. Sensei adjusted his seat on the cushion. I did the same. I sat across from Sensei, playing with the silver foil ball in my hands.

  Sensei opened his mouth as if to say, “Oh,” but no sound came out. His open mouth showed signs of his age. Much more so than earlier, when he had been chewing the abalone. Softly, I averted my gaze. Sensei did the same.

  The sound of the waves was constant.

  “Perhaps it’s time to go to sleep,” Sensei said quietly.

  “Yes,” I replied. What else was there to say? I stood up and closed the door behind me, and I walked back to my room. There were now even more moths clustered around the light in the hallway.

  I AWOKE WITH a start in the middle of the night.

  My head hurt a little. There was no sign of anyone else in my room. I tried to revive that indefinite sense of Sensei without much success.

  Once I wake up I never get back to sleep. The ticking of my watch by the pillow rang in my ears. Just when I thought it was so close, it would recede. But the watch was always in the same place. How strange.

  For a while I just lay still. Then I began to stroke my own breast under my yukata. It was neither soft nor hard. I let my hand slip down to caress my belly. My belly felt very smooth. And further on down. My palm brushed against something warm. Despite my idle touch, though, it wasn’t the least bit pleasurable. Then I thought about whether I had any hope or expectation about being touched by Sensei, and whether that would be pleasurable, but that seemed futile as well.

  I must have lain there for about thirty minutes. I thought I might fall back asleep, just listening to the sound of the waves, but instead I was wide-awake. I wondered what the chances were that Sensei too was lying there, awake in the dark.

  Once the thought occurred to me, the idea steadily expanded in my mind. Soon enough, I became convinced that Sensei was calling me from the other room. If not kept in check, nighttime thoughts are prone to amplification. I couldn’t lie still any longer. Without turning on the light, I opened the door to my room very quietly. I went to the bathroom at the end of the corridor and used the toilet. I thought that if my bladder could relax, perhaps my exaggerated mood might deflate as well. But my mind still wasn’t the least bit eased.

  I returned to my room and applied a bit of lipstick, then I tiptoed over to Sensei’s room. I put my ear to the door, trying to listen inside. Just like a thief. Rather than the sound of him breathing, I could hear some other kind of sound. I stood there for a moment, listening carefully, and now and then the sound grew louder. Sensei, I whispered. Sensei, what’s the matter? Are you all right? Is there something wrong? Should I come in?

  SUDDENLY THE DOOR opened. I shut my eyes to the flood of light from within the room.

  “Tsukiko, don’t just stand there, come inside!” Sensei beckoned to me. Once I had opened my eyes, they adjusted to the light immediately. It appeared that Sensei had been doing some kind of writing. Papers were strewn about the table.

  What are you writing? I asked, and Sensei picked up a sheet of paper from the table to show me.

  OCTOPUS FLESH, FAINTLY RED was written on the page. I gazed at it for a good long while, and then Sensei said, “I can’t seem to come up with the final syllables.”

  He mused, “What might come after ‘faintly red’?”

  I flopped down to sit on a cushion. While I had been agonizing over my feelings for Sensei, he had been agonizing over the puzzle of the octopus.

  “Sensei,” I said in a low voice. Sensei raised his head absently. On one of the sheets strewn on top of the table, there was a lame attempt at a drawing of an octopus. The octopus had a dotted hachimaki tied around its head.

  “What is it, Tsukiko?”

  “Sensei, that . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Sensei, this ...”

  “Yes?”

  “Sensei.”

  “Whatever’s the matter, Tsukiko?”

  “How about ‘the roaring sea’?”

  I could not seem to bring myself to the heart of the matter. I wasn’t even sure if there was such a thing as “the heart of the matter” between Sensei and me.

  “Oh, you mean, ‘Octopus flesh, faintly red, the roaring sea’?”

  Sensei paid no attention to my desperate state at all, or else he pretended not to notice, as he wrote the verse on the page. Octopus flesh, faintly red, the roaring sea, he recited as he wrote.

  “That’s quite good. Tsukiko, you have a fine aesthetic.”

  I murmured a vague reply. Furtively, so that Sensei wouldn’t see, I brought a piece of scrap paper to my lips and wiped away the lipstick. Sensei muttered to himself as he fine-tuned the haiku.

  “Tsukiko, what do you think of ‘The roaring sea, octopus flesh, faintly red’?�
��

  There was nothing to think about it. I parted my now colorless lips to murmur another vague response. Having transferred the poem to the page with obvious delight, Sensei now shook his head, somewhat skeptically.

  “It’s Basho,” Sensei said. I didn’t have it in me to reply, all I could do was simply nod my head. Basho’s poem is “The darkening sea, a wild duck calls, faintly white.” As he continued writing, Sensei began to lecture. Here, now, in the middle of the night.

  You could say that the haiku we have written together is based on Basho’s haiku. It has an interesting broken meter. “The darkening sea, faintly white, a wild duck calls” doesn’t work, because this way “faintly white” carries over to both the sea and the duck’s call. When it comes at the end, it brings the whole haiku to life. Do you understand? See? Tsukiko, go ahead, write another poem.

  So, with no choice, I found myself sitting there with Sensei, writing poetry. How did this come about? It was already past two o’clock in the morning. What was the state of affairs that had me counting out syllables on my fingertips and scribbling out mediocre poetry like “Moths at evening, in loneliness, circle the lantern.”

  Furious, I wrote out verses. Despite the fact that I had never in my life written haiku or the like, I churned out poems, dozens of them. At last, exhausted, I laid my head down on Sensei’s futon and sprawled out on the tatami. My eyelids closed, and I was powerless to open them. I was barely conscious of my body being dragged (it must have been Sensei doing the dragging) to lie in the middle of the futon, but when I awoke, I could still hear the sound of the waves, and light shone through the opening in the curtains.

  Feeling a bit cramped in, I glanced around and found Sensei sleeping beside me. I had been sleeping against his arm as a pillow. I let out a little cry and sat up. Then, without thinking, I fled back to my room. I dove under the covers of my own futon, then quickly leapt back out, paced circles around the room—opening the curtains, closing the curtains—before diving back under the covers and pulling the quilt up over my head. Then, leaping from the futon once again and with my mind totally blank, I returned to Sensei’s room. Sensei was waiting for me there, eyes wide open but still in bed in the dimly lit room with the curtains drawn.