The Temporal

by CJ Martín

The windshield wipers whooshing back and forth, up and down were like a great maestro passionately conducting a symphony in perfect time. Occasionally, the orchestra seemed to lag behind the unflappable conductor—even still, it was a melodious sound.

  The rain pelting the roof was the percussion; the engine, only audible during acceleration, was the string section building up to a crescendo and then quiet again as a supportive element in the background; there were of course horns and other street noises adding to the music. The wipers continued whooshing with a constant rhythm.

  ★

  It had been just a few months ago in April, he reminisced, when he took his wife to New York City. A few days of vacation leave and a long weekend made for nearly a week of first class flights and first class sights.

  It had been their third wedding anniversary and he had especially surprised her with tickets for the opera at the Met with orchestra premium seating. The opera was Madama Butterfly—he had learned on their first date that it was the one opera she had always wanted to see. It had been a complete surprise. At the time, he congratulated himself for pulling it off so flawlessly.

  There was one moment in particular that came to mind. On stage, the young geisha Chocho-san renounced all for the American Pinkerton’s love and, as a result, was renounced by all as well. Pinkerton deceitfully comforted her tears with “sweetheart, sweetheart, do not weep” even as his thoughts were on his return to America to marry another.

  It was at that moment that Sam noticed her right hand wiping a tear from her cheek. He had been startled to see his stoic wife so moved. Perhaps it was the music—he had thought—or the underlying emotions bubbling to the surface that are always inherent to anniversaries.

  But she was seeing him then...

  ★

  It ended as quickly as it had started. There was no applause. The windshield wipers took one last bow before retiring off stage. The rain was over.

  Moments later, the driver cut hard across two lanes of rain-swept asphalt and came to a stop inches from the curb. The abrupt arrival snapped Sam’s attention forward. A dozen feet ahead, he saw a large blue awning with the English lettering “WASHINGTON HOTEL” in bold white. Looking to his right and up as far as his window allowed, Sam saw nothing but building—the hotel was at least ten stories high.

  The driver mumbled something in Japanese and crooked his meter so Sam could see the fare. The bored look on the driver’s face from the reflection in the rear view mirror suggested what he meant was “Pay me and get out.”

  Sam noticed the pinky on the man’s held-out left hand was missing a notch. This was obvious even with the ubiquitous white gloves all Japanese taxi drivers wore.

  Yakuza gangster—hopefully ex-yakuza.

  Sam repressed the urge to reach over and lift the man’s shirt. Shortened fingers and tattoos are the two tell-tale signs that the person belongs to a Japanese gangster family.

  Sam handed a few thousand yen notes to the driver, who easily accepted the bills even with only four-and-a-half digits. Exiting the cab, Sam was careful to avoid a large puddle directly at his feet. No doubt the yakuza chose that spot to stop on purpose.

  He spent the rest of the evening drying in the hotel’s bar and later in his room watching Japanese television. There was a slap-stick do anything for fame show on that made him laugh despite his melancholy and the language gap.

  Sam didn’t sleep well that night. He chalked it up to jet lag—had to be the jet lag.

  Chapter 2

  Sam’s new job would begin later in the month. This gave him time to find an apartment and, of course, time to explore Japan. The hotel concierge helped him order shinkansen—bullet train—tickets to Osaka, Kyoto, and Hiroshima. The return trip would be a scenic route back through the Hokuriku area in central Japan.

  It was August, the time of the Obon festival when everyone traveled, the concierge warned. Sam was fine with that. He wasn’t in a particular hurry and thought it therapeutic to be around crowds of unfamiliar distractions.

  The next morning at the station, with a little help from a kind and elderly gentleman and a kid eager to practice his English, he found the correct train and waited in a line that led him directly to his seat.

  The train was packed with at least forty passengers in his car. With each stop, some got off, some got on. An even exchange, more or less. Sam just focused forward on the salt-and-pepper—mostly salt—hair of the passenger in front of him and the crinkly paper bib it rested on.

  Sam moved his eyes down. He snickered when he read the English written on the emergency exit chart below the bib. It read, “There are no exits.” Working through it, Sam saw the Japanese added the all-important “in this car” to its translation.

  In the train, his mind continued to wander aimlessly in search of an anchor. At times it seemed he didn’t have the strength to stop it from latching on to his wife—his ex-wife. He had a hard time accepting that simple change of title.

  The announcement music began, snapping him back to reality. A tinny, speaker-tainted voice announced the next stop in Japanese.

  Two elementary school girls giggled at seeing “Fuji-san” for the first time. Sam closed his eyes and was back in his childhood. He and his classmates had climbed that active volcano several times.

  Living in Shizuoka Prefecture, it was his school’s yearly summer field trip. Well, the bus would drive them up to level four and they would hike to level five. This is how they “climbed” Mt. Fuji. Still, even this short hike was enough to exhaust the young Sam. The air was thin and with every step, it became thinner.

  Thoughts of his classmate’s laughter and the tossing of volcanic rock at the crows gave way to fleeting images of recent events mixed with absurd abstract notions that seem so sensible to a half-asleep mind. This continued until the announcement music brought him back to the train and Osaka was just ahead.

  He got off and did the touristy stuff, not really sure about his direction. He came across and boarded an English tour bus. He heard all about Osaka Castle and that big crab in mid-town Osaka. But his mind kept wandering Stateside. Self-pity engulfed his thoughts. Nothing could penetrate this shroud of darkness, it seemed—not even the sharp pincers of that giant crab.

  A day or two later, he boarded a train to get to Kyoto and found a hotel for the night. After that, it was Hiroshima, but it was no matter. His mind was ever sinking, and his spirit was crushed under the weight of failure and betrayal. No change of scenery reciprocated a change of mind. But onward he went.

  Hokuriku was different. He took local trains stopping at every minor town. A businessman in his forties sat next to him all the way through Fukui Prefecture. Unusually bubbly and eager to strike up a conversation with a foreigner, the man provided a welcome distraction from Sam’s melancholy. The man had been on a week-long business trip; a week away from his family. The businessman stepped off at Eiheiji in northern Fukui leaving Sam to contemplate the meaning of the word “family.”

  In short order, Sam got off the train at Kanazawa in Ishikawa Prefecture. This August morning in Japan was like any other: humid with no healing breeze. He found an information desk at the station and asked for an English guidebook to the sights around Ishikawa.

  He had been here once before. His parents took him to Kenrokuen—one of the three great gardens of Japan, he was told. As a child he glossed over the controlled natural beauty of the garden. At thirty-five, he would have another look.

  A young girl, surely on her first summer job, took his money and handed him his ticket and a booklet. It had a full color photo of the park in the winter just as he had remembered it. The snow covered rock gardens, stone bridge, and roped trees he saw as a child instructed him how beauty—and by extension, love—needed to be restrained and cultivated. But it was now a hot, eternal summer and the trees were left naked and free. This led his thoughts back to his wife; had he been too controlling or not enough? He knew the trees were trying to teach him something, but he wasn’t sure what
it was.

  Following the instructions on the tourist guide, he took a bus to Noto Peninsula. Noto boldly sticks out the top of Ishikawa Prefecture into the Sea of Japan. Sam wanted to be bold.

  They stopped at a small building that served as a bus stop. The sounds and smell of an unseen beach were strong and nearby. He could even taste the salty water in the air.

  The Japanese characters on a paper pinned to a board caught his eye. He started to ask someone what it meant, but thought it better to leave the mystery intact for now. He began jotting down a rough representation of the kanji to look up later.

  He only copied a single character when a clock chimed and distracted him. He heard it ring one, two, three... He knew it had to be ten o’clock, but he continued counting anyway... six, seven, eight...

  Somewhere between nine and ten, time stopped. The earth, a hungry lion, groaned. There seemed to be a pause, a preamble to the inevitable, like the moment after an orchestra tunes but before the performance begins—an overwhelming silence.

  In a moment seemingly outside time, he relived his birth. He didn’t have time to think of the oddity of it. In fact, it seemed there was no time involved. It was more of a holistic feeling; not a thought or memory, but something he just understood instinctively. He experienced his mother’s mixture of extreme pain and joy, seemingly opposite feelings in perfect harmony.

  Then the rubber band snapped.

  All the pent-up energy imploded inside him. Time had no hold on him. Sam, for that one moment, seemed to float outside his body; see all things, hear all things. His senses were heightened and time slowed, if it existed at all. A terrible sound; of trumpets; a thousand percussion; brass instruments; simultaneously striking a crescendo of vastly discorded notes. The sound waves were even visible to Sam’s eyes as they blasted him with extraordinary force into a newly formed cavity. The building next to him collapsed and showered him with debris and large chunks of earth.

  Chapter 3

  Looking around, Sam thought he had to be in the States. The buildings up and down the street were American style with English lettering. But something was wrong. There was smoke, confusion, and a teary-eyed mother searching frantically for her child. An explosion. Screams. Some horn was blasting, building in volume and depth. Sam arched his neck in the direction of the sound. A creeping darkness encroached upon the corners of his field of vision like an old-time photograph.

  Something was terribly wrong.

  Another explosion. More screams. A gaggle of people ran down the street toward him. In the distance beyond them, there was a ball of fire consuming everything in its path—as high as the sky, as wide as the buildings containing it. It grew larger heading—no, aiming—directly for Sam. His legs defied the command to move. He threw up his arms in a futile attempt to fire-proof his face.

  Sam awoke with a gasp of air and labored breathing. He was in a hospital room, and through the half-curtained window, he could see it was a moonless night. A bathroom light above the mirror gave the room a subtle illumination—the kind that make shadows seem to be more than shadows.

  He noticed there was an antique night drawer opposite of the bathroom. The large sliding door to the room was closed. A thin, translucent bag in the trash can near the door twitched ever so slightly. There must be a draft, he thought. But then his eyes and ears made out a fan on the floor quietly circulating the air.

  As his breathing returned to normal, he heard a voice to his left. A woman’s voice was speaking quickly and softly. He could only recognize scattered Japanese words here and there.

  “Ikanakereba naranai—I must go...”

  He turned but saw nothing.

  Another voice, this time of an older man, came from the direction of the window. Sam jerked his head quickly, adjusting his eyes to the darkness. He heard one word:

  “Shinu—die?”

  Just then, the door cracked, and he heard a third voice say, “Shitsurei shimasu.” The door slid open fully. A man, very much real, walked in. The bathroom mixed its dull light with the bright hallway and Sam could see the well-lit contours of a doctor.

  “Ah, you are awake. We were very worried.”

  Sam watched a shadowy arm reach for the wall plate and snap the room’s light switch on. The fluorescent fixtures above buzzed to life, creating a suddenly bright but stale atmosphere in the room. The impeccably clean walls, ceiling, and even bed sheets were pure white, making Sam feel like he was either in an insane asylum or else stranded in the Arctic. Despite the comfortable room temperature, he instinctively pulled the blanket tighter.

  Sam squinted his eyes and looked at the doctor. The man also dressed completely in white appeared to be in his mid-forties; his still dark hair had only minute gray accents at the temples. To complete the picture, he wore a stethoscope draped around his neck and smiled broadly. He seemed pleased to be there.

  “Doctor, wh... what’s going on? Where am I?”

  “You were very lucky. Do you remember earthquake?” The doctor continued with his smile and seemed to have the habit of raising his left eyebrow like Mister Spock when speaking.

  Sam was unclear what happened at the beach, but yes, he nodded, it must have been an earthquake.

  “It was shindo six—on the Richter scale, I don’t know, but it was big,” he said, raising an eyebrow in emphasis. “We found you the next day. In fact, how do you say, the center of the earthquake was close where you were, maybe exactly where you were. A small hole opened under you and things fell over you. We had dogs and one of them found you. There was some fear of the tsunami but it’s okay now.”

  The doctor’s smile didn’t fail. He was very pleased that his English was being put to such good use. It was fairly rare for the doctor to have a patient with whom he could practice his English. It was a small village and the tourists were usually healthy.

  “Ah, pardon me. I am Doctor Watanabe. And more important, you seem to be in good shape. You have some bruised ribs and mild dehydration, but considering, you are in excellent health. I’m not sure why you were out so long—I did not find any evidence of head trauma. Just be sure to drink plenty of water.”

  Next to a pitcher on the side table was an upside-down cup. The doctor flipped it over and poured Sam a drink.

  Sam took the small cup and drained it in one gulp. For a few moments, he just looked at the empty cup unable to process what had happened.

  “Are you all right?” The doctor’s smile changed to a concerned frown. “Do you have any pain?”

  Sam shook his head and focused his eyes and mind on the current situation. The earthquake made sense; the voices did not.

  “No. Arigatou. I’m fine. Doctor, are... are there other people in this room?”

  Dr. Watanabe seemed puzzled at first, but quickly stooped under the bed and obligingly peeked in the closet.

  “Nope. I believe we are alone.”

  “I know this sounds crazy, but I heard a woman over there and an older man at the window just before you came in.”

  The doctor’s big smile returned.

  “I’m sure you heard a patient in the next room. This is an old hospital. The walls are quite thin. We Japanese have a saying, ‘The walls have ears and the paper walls have eyes.’ Better not tell any secrets here!”

  With that he gave a big chuckle. He told Sam to get some rest and that he would be around in the morning. A nurse would be on hand if needed. Her English wasn’t great, he said, but better than the day nurse’s.

  Sam, slightly reassured, smiled back. The doctor turned off the bathroom light, and as he slipped out, he pulled the door shut. “Shitsurei shimasu,” Sam heard muffled from the hallway.

  Sam closed his eyes, half expecting to hear the previous conversation continue. It didn’t, and Sam soon drifted off into a deep and pleasant sleep.

  Chapter 4

  “Samuel Williams-san?”

  Not being sure if the velvety voice was that of an angel or someone from the other side of the thin walls, Sam
opened his eyes with caution. It was all a blur, but it was daylight, and he could make out the figure of a Japanese woman in a kimono standing in the doorway of his hospital room. His eyes were still adjusting, but even without his glasses, he knew he was looking at a beautiful woman in her late twenties. Even so, her bearing was that of a far more mature lady.

  “Samuel, can you hear me.”

  “Yes. Sorry. I... Do I know you?”

  He didn’t like admitting the fact that he had no clue who she was. She certainly wasn’t dressed as a nurse and her English pronunciation was spot on. He thought about what the doctor had said and decided she couldn’t be the day nurse. A pleasant thought crossed his mind: Perhaps he was suffering from a mild case of amnesia like in the movies. Maybe this was his girlfriend? His wife? Did they have children?

  “No, we have never met.”

  Sam couldn’t help but let out an unhappy sigh.

  She was calmly composed, and yet Sam saw in her eyes a sense of extreme relief as if she had just discovered some long lost treasure. The corners of her mouth turned ever so slightly, forming a reassuring smile when she spoke.

  “I am Suteko.”

  Sam noticed his glasses on the side table. Amazingly, they not only survived the earthquake intact, but seemed to be in better shape than before. He ran his fingers over the cool metal and decided someone must have cleaned the lenses and straightened the frames while he was out.

  He put the glasses on and noticed she had advanced to the bedrail. She was indeed beautiful.

  Sam thought how some women were beautiful at a distance—imperfections obscured by space and poor eyesight. Others, more rarely, became more beautiful the closer they were. She was of the latter.

  There was something else. She seemed familiar, nostalgic even.

  He thought of a reoccurring dream he’d had since childhood. In the dream, there was a woman standing and welcoming him, always smiling. He would never see her face—or at least he would never remember her face upon waking—but he knew her intimately. Within each dream, Sam experienced an overwhelming sense of love—a love incorporating all the connotations of the word from the basest to the highest form: lust—admiration—devotion—mania—all-encompassing—totally unconditional—love.