Graveyard of Memories

by Barry Eisler

  When we got to the entrance to Taro, I said, “So here’s the tricky part. What do you want to do? I can help you down, get you seated, and send someone up for your chair. Will that work?”

  She nodded. She looked a little scared.

  I thought the easiest thing would be to just scoop her up in my arms, but I imagined she wouldn’t like that. I knew I wouldn’t—it would make me feel too much like a baby, an invalid. “What’s comfortable for you?” I said. “I’m thinking if I squat down next to you, you can put your arm around my neck, I can put mine around your waist, and away we’ll go. Sound okay?”

  She nodded again. “Yeah.”

  I got down next to her, and we did it the way I suggested. It was more awkward than I’d anticipated, and I realized I’d been stupid—I’d helped drunks walk, and wounded men walk, and I was expecting something similar here. But she couldn’t put any weight on her legs at all. They were useless, just dangling from her body. God, no wonder she must have hated being out of her chair, relying on other people.

  “Wait a second, I don’t think this is going to work,” I said. “Here, I have a better idea.”

  I shifted around until I was facing her, my back to the stairs. “Put both arms around my neck. Tighter. That’s it. Now just…lean against me. Don’t worry, I won’t drop you, I’ve got the bannister.” I put my free arm around her waist and arched back a little so I could take some of her weight onto my torso, then started down the stairs backward. She was surprisingly light. But of course—her legs would weigh almost nothing. I moved slowly and carefully. I tried not to notice how her breasts felt pressed against my chest, or how her arms felt around my neck, or what her back felt like through her blouse. Or how good she smelled. I wasn’t notably successful.

  We made it without incident, if “without incident” can be said to include our unspoken agreement to not mention the hard-on that arose to accompany our passage. What can I say, I was only twenty. I was horrified when I felt it start to happen, but there was nothing I could do. And my embarrassment was made worse by the smile she seemed to be trying to suppress. I didn’t know what kind of feeling she had down there, but somehow she seemed to be aware of my condition.

  We went inside the club. Kyoko was issuing instructions to a thirtyish guy behind the bar and to two college-age girls I assumed were waitresses. When she saw us, she immediately sent a bartender to retrieve the wheelchair, and made sure he placed it front center. In fact, there wasn’t a bad seat in the place—it was too small for anyone to be more than a few paces from the stage. Kyoko chatted with Sayaka for a few minutes—how Kyoko had opened this place, who she booked here, the musicians they both liked. Apparently, Kyoko was personal friends with Hino, and promised we would have a chance to meet him. Sayaka was ecstatic. People started drifting in, and within a half hour, the place was packed.

  “Everything okay?” I asked as we waited for Hino and his quartet to come on.

  She nodded. “Yeah. Kyoko’s really nice. Natural. A lot of people think if you’re in a wheelchair, you must be stupid, and they talk to you like a spinal injury is the same as brain damage. She’s not like that.” She paused, then added, “Neither are you.”

  A minute later, the lights dimmed, and Hino and three other guys came walking briskly up the side of the room, the only place where there was any kind of free passage. The room broke out in wild applause. Hino raised his trumpet above his head and gave it a shake in greeting, and the applause and shouting redoubled.

  They took their positions on the stage—Hino, the pianist, the bassist, the drummer. Then, without any fanfare, they started playing. I didn’t know the piece—I knew very little jazz at all back then—but it was beautiful. Starting softly and building slowly, it was elegiac and full of longing and it made me happy and sad, sometimes alternately, sometimes at the same time. It made me feel like I was missing something and I didn’t even know what it was. It was alluring, but frustrating, too, to be able to sense something so profound and not be able to grasp it.

  I realized I was nodding along to the music and stopped myself, embarrassed. I saw Sayaka glance at me and smile. I looked around. Everyone was nodding their heads, or tapping their toes, or swaying slightly. It was hard not to. These people didn’t know each other, none of us did, and yet we were all responding the same way. It was like a community of strangers, united by…what? I didn’t know. Whatever we felt in the music.

  When the song was over, the room erupted in fresh shouts and applause. Hino introduced his quartet, and explained that the song was called “Alone, Alone and Alone.” I must have been the only one there who didn’t already know.

  While they played, Sayaka and I snacked on a variety of small plates. Sayaka didn’t drink—I thought maybe because she didn’t want to have to be taken to the bathroom more than absolutely necessary, but I wasn’t sure—but I ordered a whisky. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, but I figured whisky was a sophisticated drink and it seemed like it would go with jazz. Of course, when the waitress asked what brand I wanted, I was stymied, and covered by asking her what they had. Hibiki and Yamazaki, she told me. Mentally flipping a coin, I told her I’d have a Yamazaki. Twelve-year-old or eighteen? Feeling like the mask of sophistication I’d tried to don was being peeled right off me, I told her the eighteen. Straight or rocks? Was she fucking with me? Straight, please. At which point, the q-and-a game mercifully ended. As it happened, the Yamazaki was so good I ordered another, and would have gotten a third if Sayaka had been drinking with me, and if I hadn’t needed to drive later.

  I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the performance—not just the music, but the experience of sharing it with a roomful of strangers. I had expected any pleasure I might take in it to be mostly vicarious, but it turned out to be much more than that. Occasionally, I would be struck by something discordant—an image or a sensation of what I had done in the last few days. But I was able to push those intrusions away. If I could continue to be mindful of the moment and not of my memories, I thought, I’d be all right. That was one life. This was another. They were separate, and I would keep them so.

  When the show was over, the applause finally done, and the patrons beginning to file out the door, Kyoko introduced us to the band as promised. Hino gripped Sayaka’s hand in both of his and bowed simultaneously. It was a nice gesture, a combination of the western and the eastern, with a lot of warmth in it. Kyoko brought over one of Hino’s albums and he signed it for Sayaka. She couldn’t stop smiling, and I was glad to see her shedding some of the detached cool that had so characterized her when we’d first met.

  Sayaka needed the bathroom before we left, and it went fine. If she felt any embarrassment about having to be helped in and out, she didn’t show it. I followed suit when she was done, and paid the bill at the door.

  “Well?” I said. “You ready?”

  She nodded, and we got her up the stairs pretty much the same way we’d gotten her down. With pretty much the same embarrassing impediment on my part. The bartender followed us up with the wheelchair. I helped Sayaka get seated, we said goodnight, and headed back to the van.

  “Was it okay?” I asked, pushing her along through Kabukichō’s neon-lit alleys, maneuvering around revelers, Sayaka’s head swiveling as she took in the sights and the noise and the crowds. I knew I was being paranoid, but still I was careful to keep my head down, just on the remote chance I might be recognized.

  She glanced back at me. “It was amazing. Thank you.”

  That made me really happy. Without thinking, I said, “Hey, do you feel like taking a walk? I mean—”

  She laughed. “I know what you mean. Where?”

  “I don’t know. Ueno Park, maybe? It’s right next to Uguisudani, so…”

  There was a pause, then she said, “No, let’s do something different. I want to see something new.”

  That was encouraging. I thought for a moment. “Do you know Kitazawa-gawa?”

  “The hanami place?”
/>   “Yeah, in Setagaya. It’s crowded when the blossoms are blooming, but otherwise it’s just a nice place for a stroll.” I realized as I said it that “stroll” wasn’t the right word. But she’d already told me she understood what I meant.

  She smiled. “Well? What are we waiting for?”

  chapter

  twenty-two

  We drove the short distance southwest, parked, and got out. Setagaya was an upscale suburban part of Tokyo, outside the Yamanote, where people with money might move if they wanted a little less urban density and a little more green. It was quiet most of the time, and at night could be remarkably serene. And Kitazawa-gawa, a kind of nature walk to the extent such a thing could be said to exist in Tokyo, was particularly charming in the evening, with a little creek burbling along beside it, lots of grass and trees, and evocative shadows cast by tall iron streetlights. I pushed Sayaka along, enjoying her company, liking that she trusted me enough to take her somewhere new. I was beginning to appreciate how difficult it must have been for her to get around. The world was nowhere near as handicapped-accessible then as it’s since become, and every grassy or other soft surface, every narrow space, every curb represented an obstacle. And that’s with someone there to help. Alone, just a few short stairs would have been for her what a twenty-foot wall would be to me.

  “It’s another universe out here,” she said, looking around us and up at the trees.

  “I know. Tokyo’s like the blind men and the elephant. Every part you touch fools you into thinking you know the whole thing. But I don’t think anyone can really know Tokyo. It’s too big, and too…I don’t know. Mysterious.”

  She glanced back at me. “You really like it, don’t you?”

  I didn’t answer right away. The wheels of her chair crunched softly along the pavement. Somewhere, a dog barked. Other than that, the city was silent and still.

  “It’s kind of a love-hate relationship, I guess.”

  “Why? Because you’re half?”

  Haafu is a neutral Japanese word for people of mixed parentage, words borrowed from abroad carrying less emotional content.

  “Yeah, you know. I never really felt accepted here. I loved it, but it didn’t love me. I guess it’s kind of pathetic that I’m back. Like showing up on the doorstep of a girl who kicked me out. But…shit, it’s a long story.”

  “You have someplace to go?”

  Apparently, I did not. I told her a little about my childhood in Tokyo. The taunts, the bullies, my father’s conflicted shame. “It’s not a great place to grow up if you’re not really Japanese,” I said. “I mean, if you’re a hundred percent something else, they don’t care. They might even admire you. But if you’re half…if you look Japanese but you’re really not…they hate that.”

  She laughed. “You think I don’t know?”

  “You mean the wheelchair? Do you get discriminated against? I’m sorry, I admit I’ve never really thought about it.”

  “Not the wheelchair. Being Korean.”

  I stopped pushing and looked at her from the side. “You’re Korean?”

  “Second-generation zainichi. And it’s just like you said. Japanese hate us because they can’t tell us apart. I mean, all prejudice is crazy, but it’s even crazier when you have to hire a private detective to track down a person’s lineage so you can know whether to discriminate against him!”

  We both laughed. I said, “So you’re Korean. I didn’t realize.”

  “Yeah. Sayaka Kimura. My parents chose Sayaka because they didn’t want people to know, but Kimura’s kind of a giveaway.”

  Kimura was a typical zainichi surname, though not exclusively so, an easy variant on the native Kim.

  “Well, I wouldn’t have known.”

  “Does it bother you?”

  “No. I like it. It’s nice to know another outsider. Is that part of why you want to go to America?”

  “I just want to get out of here. I told you, it’s not really love-hate for me. It’s just hate. I want to go someplace that’s not so big, that’s not growing so fast, that’s not so overwhelming and impersonal. Someplace where they don’t care where you’re from, or where your parents are from.”

  I didn’t know that America was really that. It hadn’t been for me. But maybe it would be for her. I started pushing again. “What will you do there?”

  “I haven’t figured that out yet. College, to start with, if I can save enough money.”

  So she hadn’t been to college. I wondered if that embarrassed her, if it was why she hadn’t answered at the hotel when I first asked.

  “And after that?”

  She shrugged. “Whatever I want. I want to get a good job. And be free, really free. I feel like I’ve been living such a stultified life here. I need to take more risks. And I don’t know why, but I’m afraid to take them here.”

  “You think America will make you braver?”

  She looked back at me, maybe trying to see if I was teasing her. I wasn’t.

  “You think that’s silly?”

  I thought about Cambodia. “No. Most people think bravery comes entirely from within, but it doesn’t. It depends on a lot of things. Maybe one of them is just…where you live. Your culture, your surroundings.”

  She nodded. “I swear, this city is killing me. I just feel so inhibited here. I imagine America, and I see myself doing anything, doing everything. Maybe I can drive there, if someone invents a car with hand controls. And I want to scuba dive. Why not? You don’t need legs for that. And skydive…why shouldn’t you be able to skydive in a wheelchair? You think falling is any harder for me? It’s easier.” She paused and looked around. “I just have to get out of here first.”

  I didn’t know about scuba diving and skydiving, let alone all the rest. But why disabuse someone of her dreams?

  I saw a park bench next to an old, gnarled tree, bathed in the shadows cast by one of the lights set out along the path. “Do you want to sit? I mean…shit, I’m sorry, I keep doing that.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t be sorry. I like it. That you see I can go for a walk in the chair. And that sitting next to a park bench isn’t the same as being in the chair.”

  “Thanks for that. I’ve been feeling a little stupid at times.”

  She looked at me in a way I couldn’t interpret. “You’re not stupid.”

  I positioned the wheelchair next to the bench and sat close to her.

  “All right,” she said. “So now you have to answer your own question. What is it about jazz? I saw you tapping your feet and nodding your head. Did you like it?”

  “A lot, yeah.”

  “Why?”

  I told her about how it had made me feel…that feeling of longing for something I didn’t even know I lacked. And how I was struck by the way the music had created this sense of kinship and commonality in a room full of strangers, all of us feeling the same thing.

  “Yes,” she said, when I was done. “That’s it, exactly.”

  “Was this your first concert?”

  “Yes. And it’s exactly what I imagined it would be like. No, better. It was really special. Thanks for taking me. Thanks for…encouraging me.”

  I felt myself blushing and looked down for a moment. I didn’t want to look like an awkward kid with her.

  But she spotted it anyway and laughed. “Are you blushing?”

  Shit. “I didn’t think you could see it, in the shadows.”

  “I couldn’t. But then you looked down.”

  “Oh, great,” I said. We both laughed, then were quiet for a moment.

  I looked at her. “Can I ask you something personal?”

  She brushed a hair back from her face. “Sure. If I don’t want to answer, I won’t.”

  “How…were you born that way? Or did something happen? You said ‘injury’ before, so…”

  There was a long pause. Then she said, “I was sixteen. On my way home from school. A car hit me from behind.”

  A strange, clear sympathy opened
up inside me. But I didn’t know how to express it. I only said, “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t even remember it. I woke up in the hospital.”

  “Did they catch the guy who did it?”

  “Oh, yeah. He totaled his car trying to get away afterward. Drove it into a wall. I got this, and he didn’t have a scratch on him.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “He was drunk. But it turned out he was also a big-shot politician. A lot of connections. His people offered my parents some money as an apology. But really to keep their mouths shut and not make trouble.”

  “Damn.”

  “My parents wouldn’t take it. They wanted to see the guy in jail. But then some other people came to the house and recommended my parents take the money.”

  “Yakuza?”

  She nodded. “So what could my parents do? They took the money and signed some papers. It wasn’t even enough to cover the operations I needed.”

  I thought about the four yakuza I’d killed earlier that day. I suddenly wished I could do it again. Well, I’d be going after Mad Dog soon enough. And Mori, another big-shot politician. The thought was both grim and glad.

  “Where are your parents now?”

  “They’re gone. They were old. They had me late—they thought they couldn’t have children, and then after all those years they wound up with me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t keep saying that, or I won’t tell you any more sad stories.”

  I smiled a little, for her benefit. “Do you remember the name of the guy who hit you?”

  She nodded. “Nobuo Kamioka. I’ll never forget it.”

  “Do you…I would want to kill him.” I didn’t mean to say it. It just bled through somehow.

  She was quiet for a moment. “My father felt like that, I know. And I guess I did for a while, too.”

  “Not anymore?”

  “I don’t know. At some point, I learned not to think of it that way. I believe in karma.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yeah. I believe in the end we get paid back what we deal out.”