“Say something even nicer.”
“I really like you, Midori. A lot.”
“How much is a lot?”
“Like a spring bear,” I said.
“A spring bear?” Midori looked up again. “What’s that all about? A spring bear.”
“You’re walking through a field all by yourself one day in spring, and this sweet little bear cub with velvet fur and shiny little eyes comes walking along. And he says to you, ‘Hi, there, little lady. Want to tumble with me?’ So you and the bear cub spend the whole day in each other’s arms, tumbling down this clover-covered hill. Nice, huh?”
“Yeah. Really nice.”
“That’s how much I like you.”
“That is the best thing I’ve ever heard,” said Midori, cuddling up against my chest. “If you like me that much, you’ll do anything I tell you to do, right? You won’t get mad, right?”
“No, of course I won’t get mad.”
“And you’ll take care of me always and always.”
“Of course I will,” I said, stroking her short, soft, boyish hair. “Don’t worry, everything is going to be fine.”
“But I’m scared,” she said.
I held her softly, and soon her shoulders were rising and falling, and I could hear the regular breathing of sleep. I slipped out of her bed and went to the kitchen, where I drank a beer. I wasn’t the least bit sleepy, so I thought about reading a book, but I couldn’t find anything worth reading nearby. I considered returning to Midori’s room to look for one there, but I didn’t want to wake her up by rummaging around where she was sleeping.
I sat there staring into space for a while, sipping my beer, when it occurred to me that I was in a bookstore. I went downstairs, switched on the light, and started looking through the paperback shelves. There wasn’t much that appealed to me, and most of what did I had read already, but I had to have something to read no matter what. I picked a discolored copy of Hermann Hesse’s Beneath the Wheel that must have been hanging around the shop unsold for a long time, and left the money for it by the cash register. This was my small contribution to reducing the inventory of the Kobayashi Bookstore.
I sat at the kitchen table, drinking my beer and reading Beneath the Wheel. I had first read the novel the year I entered middle school. And now, eight years later, here I was, reading the same book in a girl’s kitchen, wearing the undersized pajamas of her dead father. Funny. If it hadn’t been for these strange circumstances, I would probably never have reread Beneath the Wheel.
The book did have its dated moments, but as a novel it wasn’t bad. I moved through it slowly, enjoying it line by line, in the hushed bookstore in the middle of the night. A dusty bottle of brandy stood on a shelf in the kitchen. I poured a little into a coffee cup and sipped it. The brandy warmed me but it did nothing to help me feel sleepy.
I went to check on Midori a little before three, but she was sound asleep. She must have been exhausted. The lights from the block of shops beyond the window cast a soft white glow, like moonlight, over the room. Midori slept with her back to the light. She lay so perfectly still, she might have been frozen stiff. Bending over, I caught the sound of her breathing. She slept just like her father.
The suitcase from her recent travels stood by the bed. Her white coat hung on the back of a chair. Her desktop was neatly arranged, and on the wall over the desk hung a Snoopy calendar. I nudged the curtain aside and looked down at the deserted shops. Every store was closed, their metal shutters down, the vending machines hunched in front of the liquor store the only sign of something waiting for the dawn. The moan of longdistance truck tires sent a deep shudder through the air every now and then. I went back to the kitchen, poured myself another shot of brandy, and went on reading Beneath the Wheel.
By the time I finished the book, the sky was growing light. I made myself some instant coffee and used some notepaper and a ballpoint pen I found on the table to write a message to Midori: “I drank some of your brandy. I bought a copy of Beneath the Wheel. It got light out, so I’m going home. Good-bye.” Then, after some hesitation, I wrote, “You look really cute when you’re sleeping.” I washed my coffee cup, switched off the kitchen light, went downstairs, quietly lifted the shutter, and went outside. I worried that a neighbor might find me suspicious, but there was no one on the street at five-fifty-something in the morning. Only the crows were on their usual rooftop perch, glaring down at the street. I glanced up at the pale pink curtains in Midori’s window, walked to the streetcar stop, rode to the end of the line, and walked to my dorm. On the way I found an open eatery and had myself a breakfast of rice, miso soup, pickled vegetables, and fried eggs. Circling around to the back of the dorm, I gave a little knock on Nagasawa’s first-floor window. He let me in right away.
“Coffee?” he asked.
“Nah.”
I thanked him, went up to my room, brushed my teeth, took my pants off, got under the covers, and clamped my eyes shut. Finally, a dreamless sleep closed over me like a heavy lead door.
I WROTE TO NAOKO every week, and she often wrote back. None of her letters was very long. Soon there were mentions of the cold November mornings and evenings.
You went back to Tokyo just about the time the fall weather was deepening, so for a time I couldn’t tell whether the hole that opened up inside me was from missing you or from the change of season. Reiko and I talk about you all the time. She says be sure to say Hi to you. She is as nice to me as ever. I don’t think I would have been able to stand this place if I didn’t have her with me. I cry when I’m lonely. Reiko says it’s good I can cry. But feeling lonely really hurts. When I’m lonely at night, people talk to me from the darkness. They talk to me the way trees moan in the wind at night. Kizuki; my sister: they talk to me like that all the time. They’re lonely too, and looking for someone to talk to.
I often reread your letters at night when I’m lonely and in pain. I get confused by a lot of things that come from outside, but your descriptions of the world around you give me wonderful relief. It’s so strange! I wonder why that should be? So I read them over and over, and Reiko reads them too. Then we talk about the things you tell me. I really liked the part about that girl Midori’s father. We look forward to getting your letter every week as one of our few entertainments—yes, in a place like this, letters are our entertainments.
I try my best to set aside a time in the week for writing to you, but once I actually sit down in front of the blank piece of letter paper, I begin to feel depressed. I’m really having to push myself to write this letter, too. Reiko’s been yelling at me to answer you. Don’t get me wrong, though. I have tons of things I want to talk to you about, to tell you about. It’s just hard for me to put them into writing. Which is why it’s so painful for me to write letters.
Speaking of Midori, she sounds like an interesting person. Reading your letter, I got the feeling she might be in love with you. When I told that to Reiko, she said, “Well, of course she is! Even I am in love with Watanabe!” We’re picking mushrooms and gathering chestnuts and eating them every day. And I do mean every day: rice with chestnuts, rice with matsutake mushrooms, but they taste so great, we don’t get tired of them. Reiko doesn’t eat that much, though. For her, it’s still one cigarette after another. The birds and the rabbits are doing just fine.
Good-bye.
Three days after my twentieth birthday, a package arrived for me from Naoko. Inside I found a wine-colored crewneck sweater and a letter.
Happy Birthday! I hope you have a happy year being twenty. My own year of being twenty looks as if it’s going to end with me as miserable as ever, but I’d really like it if you could have your share of happiness and mine combined. Really. Reiko and I each knit half of this sweater. If I had done it all by myself, it would have taken until next Valentine’s Day. The good half is Reiko’s, and the bad half is mine. Reiko is so good at everything she does, I sometimes hate myself when I’m watching her. I mean, I haven’t got one single thing I�
�m really good at!
Good-bye. Be well.
The package had a short note from Reiko, too.
How are you? For you, Naoko may be the pinnacle of happiness, but for me she’s just a clumsy girl. Still, we managed to finish this sweater in time for your birthday. Handsome, isn’t it? We picked the color and the style. Happy Birthday.
THINKING BACK ON THE YEAR 1969, ALL THAT COMES TO MIND FOR me is a swamp—a deep, sticky bog that feels as if it’s going to suck my shoe off each time I take a step. I walk through the mud, exhausted. In front of me, behind me, I can see nothing but an endless swampy darkness.
Time itself slogged along in rhythm with my faltering steps. The people around me had gone on ahead long before, while my time and I hung back, struggling through the mud. The world around me was on the verge of great transformations. Death had already taken John Coltrane, who was joined now by so many others. People screamed there’d be revolutionary changes—which always seemed to be just ahead, at the curve in the road. But the “changes” that came were just two-dimensional stage sets, background without substance or meaning. I trudged along through each day in its turn, looking up only rarely, eyes locked on the endless swamp that lay before me, planting my right foot, raising my left, planting my left foot, raising my right, never sure where I was, never sure I was headed in the right direction, knowing only that I had to keep moving, one step at a time.
I turned twenty, autumn gave way to winter, but in my life nothing changed in any significant way. Unexcited, I went to my classes, worked three nights a week in the record store, reread The Great Gatsby now and then, and when Sunday came I would do my wash and write a long letter to Naoko. Sometimes I would go out with Midori for a meal or to the zoo or a movie. The sale of the Kobayashi Bookstore went off as planned, and Midori and her sister moved into a two-bedroom apartment near Myogadani, a more upscale neighborhood. Midori would move out when her sister got married, and take a unit by herself, she said. Meanwhile, she invited me to their new apartment for lunch once. It was a sunny, handsome place, and Midori seemed to enjoy living there far more than she had over the Kobayashi Bookstore.
Every once in a while, Nagasawa would suggest that we go out on one of our excursions, but I always found something I had to do instead. I just didn’t want to bother. Not that I didn’t like the idea of sleeping with girls: it was just that, when I thought about the whole process I had to go through—drinking on the town, looking for the right kind of girls, talking to them, going to a hotel—it was too much trouble. I had to admire Nagasawa all the more for the way he could continue the ritual without growing sick and tired of it. Maybe what Hatsumi had said to me had had some effect: I could make myself feel far happier just thinking about Naoko than sleeping with some stupid, nameless girl. The sensation of Naoko’s fingers bringing me to climax in a grassy field remained vivid inside me.
I wrote to Naoko at the beginning of December to ask if it would be all right for me to come and visit her during winter break. An answer came from Reiko saying they would love to have me. She explained that Naoko was having trouble writing and that she was answering for her. I was not to take this to mean that Naoko was feeling especially bad: there was no need for me to worry. These things came in waves.
When the break came, I stuffed my things into my knapsack, put on snow boots, and set out for Kyoto. The odd doctor had been right: the winter mountains blanketed in snow were incredibly beautiful. As before, I slept two nights in the apartment with Naoko and Reiko, and spent three days with them doing much the same kinds of things as before. When the sun went down, Reiko would play her guitar and the three of us would sit around talking. Instead of our picnic, we went cross-country skiing. An hour of tramping through the woods on skis left us breathless and sweaty. We also joined the residents and staff shoveling snow when there was time. Doctor Miyata popped over to our table at dinner to explain why people’s middle fingers are longer than their index fingers while with toes it works the other way. The gatekeeper, Omura, talked to me again about Tokyo pork. Reiko enjoyed the records I brought as gifts from the city. She transcribed a few tunes and figured them out on the guitar.
Naoko was even less talkative than she had been in the fall. When the three of us were together, she would sit on the sofa, smiling, and hardly say a word. Reiko seemed to be gabbing to take up the slack. “But don’t worry,” Naoko told me. “This is just one of those times. It’s a lot more fun for me to listen to you two than to talk myself.”
Reiko gave herself some chores that took her out of the apartment so that Naoko and I could get in bed. I kissed her neck and shoulders and breasts, and she used her hands to bring me to climax as before. Afterward, holding her close, I told her how her touch had stayed with me these two months, that I had thought of her and masturbated.
“You haven’t slept with anybody else?” Naoko asked.
“Not once,” I said.
“All right, then, here’s something else for you to remember.” She slid down and touched my penis with her lips, then enveloped it in her warmth and ran her tongue all over it, her long, straight hair swaying over my belly and groin with each movement of her lips until I came for a second time.
“Do you think you can remember that?” she asked.
“Of course I can,” I said. “I’ll always remember it.”
I held her tight and slid my hand inside her panties, touching her still-dry vagina. Naoko shook her head and pulled my hand away. We held each other for a time, saying nothing.
“I’m thinking of getting out of the dorm when the school year ends and looking for an apartment,” I said. “I’ve had it with dorm life. If I keep working part-time I can pretty much cover my expenses. How about coming to Tokyo to live with me, the way I suggested before?”
“Oh, Toru, thank you. I’m so happy that you would ask me to do something like that!”
“It’s not that I think there’s anything wrong with this place,” I said. “It’s quiet, the surroundings are perfect, and Reiko is a wonderful person. But it’s not a place to stay for a long time. It’s too specialized for a long stay. The longer you’re here, I’m sure, the harder it is to leave.”
Instead of answering, Naoko turned her gaze to the outside. Beyond the window, there was nothing to see but snow. Snow clouds hung low and heavy in the sky, with only the smallest gap between clouds and snow-covered earth.
“Take your time, think it over,” I said. “Whatever happens, I’m going to move by the end of March. Anytime you decide you want to join me, you can come.”
Naoko nodded. I wrapped my arms around her as carefully as if I had been holding a work of art delicately fashioned from glass. She put her arms around my neck. I was naked, and she wore only the briefest white underwear. Her body was so beautiful, I could have enjoyed looking at it all day.
“Why don’t I get wet?” Naoko murmured. “That one time was the only time it ever happened. The day of my twentieth birthday, that April. The night you held me in your arms. What is wrong with me?”
“It’s strictly psychological, I’m sure,” I said. “Give it time. There’s no hurry.”
“All of my problems are strictly psychological,” said Naoko. “What if I never get better? What if I can never have sex for the rest of my life? Can you keep loving me just the same? Will hands and lips always be enough for you? Or will you solve the sex problem by sleeping with other girls?”
“I’m an inborn optimist,” I said.
Naoko sat up in bed and slipped on a T-shirt. Over this she put on a flannel shirt, and then she got into her jeans. I put my clothes on, too.
“Let me think about it,” Naoko said. “And you think about it too.”
“I will,” I said. “And speaking of lips, what you did with them just now was great.”
Naoko reddened slightly and gave a little smile. “Kizuki used to say that, too.”
“He and I had pretty much the same tastes and opinions,” I said, smiling.
We
sat across from each other at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and talking about the old days. She was beginning to talk more about Kizuki. She would hesitate, and choose her words carefully. Every now and then, the snow would fall for a while and stop. The sky never cleared the whole three days I was there. “I think I can get back here in March,” I said as I was leaving. I gave her one last, heavily padded hug with my winter coat on, and kissed her on the lips. “Good-bye,” she said.
1970—A YEAR with a whole new sound to it—came along, and that put an end to my teen years. Now I could step ahead into a whole new swamp. Then it was time for final exams, and those I passed with relative ease. If you have nothing else to do and spend all your time going to classes, it takes no special study to get through finals.
Some problems arose in the dorm, though. A few guys active in one of the political factions kept their helmets and iron pipes hidden in their rooms. They had a run-in with some of the jocks under the wing of the dorm head, as a result of which two of them were injured and six expelled from the dorm. The aftershocks of the incident stayed on for a long time, spawning minor fights almost on a daily basis. The atmosphere that hung over the dorm was oppressive, and people’s nerves were on edge. I myself was on the verge of getting punched out by one of the jocks when Nagasawa intervened and managed to smooth things over. In any case, it was time for me to get the hell out of there.
Once I had the better part of my exams out of the way, I started looking for an apartment in earnest. After a week of searching, I came up with the right place way out in the suburbs of Kichijoji. The location was not exactly convenient, but it was a house: an independent house—a real find. Originally a gardener’s shack or some other kind of cottage, it stood off by itself in the corner of a good-size plot of land, separated from the main house by a large stretch of neglected garden. The landlord would use the front gate, and I the back, which would make it possible for me to preserve my privacy. It had one good-size room, a little kitchen and bathroom, and an unimaginably huge storage closet. It even had a veranda facing the garden. A nice old couple were renting the house at way below market value on condition that the tenant be prepared to move out the following year if their grandson decided to come to Tokyo. They assured me that I could live as I pleased there; they wouldn’t be making any demands.
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