“You are so, so slow!”
I shout back up through the early mist and floppy leaves. “I’m snagged!”
“You’re scared!”
“I am not!”
Anju laughs her wild zither when she knows she is right. The forest floor is a long way down. I worry about rotted-through branches snapping. Anju never worries because I always do it for her. She skip-reads her way up trees. She finds fingerholds in coarse bark and toeholds in smooth bark. Last week was our eleventh birthday, and already Anju can climb the gym ropes faster than any of the boys in our class, and, when she is in the mood, multiply fractions, read seventh-grade texts, and recite most Zax Omega adventures word for word. Wheatie says this is because she grabbed most of the brain cells when we were growing inside our mother. I finally unsnag my T-shirt and climb after my sister, as gracefully as a three-toed sloth with vertigo. Minutes later I find her on the top branch, copper-skinned, willow-limbed, moss-stained, thorn-scored, her ponytail knotted back. Waves of spring sea wind break on the woods. “Welcome to my tree,” she says. “Not bad,” I admit, but it is better than “not bad.” I have never climbed so high before. We already trekked up the razor escarpment to get here, so the view is awesome. The fortress-gray mountain faces, the green river snaking out of the gorge, the hanging bridge, mishmash of roofs and power lines, port, timber yards, school soccer ground, gravel pit, Uncle Orange’s tea fields, our secret beach, its foot rock, waves breaking on the shoals around the whalestone, the long island of Tanegashima where they launch satellites, glockenspiel clouds, the envelope where the sea seals the sky. Having bombed as tree-climber-in-chief I appoint myself head cartographer. “Kagoshima is over there . . .” I am afraid to let go and point, so I nod. Anju is squinting inland. “I think I can see Wheatie airing the futons.” I can’t see our grandmother but I know Anju wants me to ask “Where?” so I don’t. The mountains rise toward the interior. Miyanoura Peak props up the sky. Hill tribes live in the rainshadow—they decapitate the lost tourists and make the skulls into drinking bowls. And there is a pool where a real kappa lives—it catches swimmers, rams its fist up through their assholes, and pulls out their hearts to eat. Yakushima islanders never go up into the mountains, except for the tourist guides. I feel a lump in my pocket and remember. “Want a champagne bomb?”
“Sure.”
Anju suddenly monkey shrieks, swings, and dangles down in front of me, giggling at my panic. Scared birds beat away nearby. Her legs grip the branch above.
“Don’t!” is all I can blurt.
Anju bares her front teeth and chickenwings her arms. “Anju the bat.”
“Anju! Don’t!”
She swings to and fro. “I vant to suckkk your bluddd!” Her hair clasp falls away and her ponytail streams earthward. “Aw! That was my last one.”
“Don’t dangle like that! Stop it!”
“Eiji’s a jellyfish, Eiji’s a jellyfish!”
I imagine her falling, ricocheting from branch to branch. “STOP IT!”
“You’re even uglier upside down. Hold the candies steady, then.”
“Swing back up first!”
“No, I was born first so you have to do what I say. Hold it steady!” She extracts a candy, unpeels the wrapper and watches it flutter away into the sea greens. Watching me, she puts the candy in her mouth and lazily swings herself back upright. “You really are such a wuss!”
“If you fell Wheatie would murder me.”
“Wuss.” Anju swings herself back upright.
My heartbeat gradually calms down.
“What happens to you when you die?” So Anju.
I don’t care as long as she stays upright. “How should I know?”
“Nobody says the same thing. Wheatie says you go to the pure land and walk in gardens with your ancestors. Boooring. Mr. Endo at school says you turn into soil. Kakimoto-sensei says it depends what you were like in this life—I’d get changed into an angel or a unicorn, but you’d come back as a maggot or toadstool.”
“So what do you think?”
“When you die they burn you, right?”
“Right.”
“So you turn into smoke, right?”
“I guess.”
“So you go there.” Anju lets go of the tree and shoots the sun with both hands. “Up, up, and away. I want to fly.”
A careworn buzzard rises on a thermal.
“In an airplane?”
“Who wants to fly in a smelly airplane?”
I suck my champagne bomb. “How do you know airplanes smell?”
Anju crunches her champagne bomb. “Airplanes must smell. All those people breathing the same air. Like the boys’ changing room in the rainy season, but a hundred times worse. No, I mean proper flying.”
“Like with a jetpack?”
“No such things as jetpacks.”
“Zax Omega has a jetpack.”
Anju airs her recently acquired sigh. “No such thing as Zax Omega.”
“Zax Omega opened the new building at the port!”
“And did he arrive by jetpack?”
“No,” I admit, “by taxi. But you’re too heavy to fly.”
“Sky Castle Laputa flies and that’s made of rock.”
“If I can’t have Zax Omega no way are you having Sky Castle Laputa.”
“Condors, then. Condors weigh more than me. They fly.”
“Condors have wings. I don’t see any wings on you.”
“Ghosts fly without wings.”
“Ghosts are dead.”
Anju picks champagne bomb shrapnel from her teeth. I have no idea what she is thinking. Leaf shadows hide my twin sister. Parts of Anju are too bright, parts of Anju are so dark she isn’t even here.
Jerking off usually sends me to sleep. Am I normal? I’ve never heard of a nineteen-year-old insomniac. I am no war criminal, no poet or scientist, I’m not even lovelorn. Lustlorn, yes. Here I am, in a city of five million women, cruising into my sexual prime, single as a leper. Let me see. Who is riding the caravan of love tonight? Zizzi Hikaru, wet-suited as per the beer ad; the glam-rock mother of Yuki Chiyo; the waitress from Jupiter Cafe; Insectoid Woman from Zax Omega and Red Plague Moon. Back to good old Zizzi, I guess. I hunt through my pockets for some tissues before the festivities commence.
I ferret around for matches to light my postcoital Mild Seven, but end up having to use my gas stove. Well, that was a failure. I am wider awake than ever. Zizzi was disappointing tonight. No sense of timing. Is she getting too young for me? FUJIFILM says 01:49. I clean myself up. What now? Practice my guitar? Write an answer to one of the two epoch-shifting letters I received this week? Which one? Let’s stick with the simpler: Akiko Kato’s reply to the letter I wrote after failing to see her. The single sheet of paper is still in the plastic bag in the freezer with the Other. I put it on the shelf next to Anju but it kept laughing at me. It came—when was it? Tuesday. Buntaro read the envelope as he handed it to me. “Osugi and Bosugi, Legal. Chasing lawyer ladies? Be careful, kid, you could end up with injunctions slapped on where it hurts. Want to hear my lawyer joke? What’s the difference between a catfish and a lawyer? Guess—go on. No? One is a scaly, bottom-dwelling scum sucker, and the other is a catfish.” I tell him I’d already heard it and dash up the video-box-stacked stairs to my capsule. I tell myself I am expecting a negative answer, but I wasn’t expecting that Akiko Kato’s “No” would pack such a slap. I already know the letter by memory. Its greatest hits include: Disclosure of a client’s personal data constitutes a betrayal of trust that no responsible attorney could consider. Pretty final. Furthermore, I feel obliged to refuse your request that I forward mail that my client has stated categorically he does not wish to receive. Not much room for doubt there. Not much room for a reply, either. Finally, in the event that legal proceedings are initiated to force data regarding your patrimony to be released, assisting you at this early stage represents a clear conflict of interest.I urge you not to pursue this matter, and trust that this
letter clarifies our position. Perfectly. Plan A is dead on arrival.
Mr. Aoyama, substationmaster of Ueno, is bald as a rivet head and has a perfect Adolf Hitler mustache. This is Tuesday, on my first working day at Ueno Station lost-property office. “I am far busier than you can imagine”—he speaks without taking his eyes off his paperwork—“but I make a point of addressing new recruits on an individual basis.” Wide silences yawn between his sentences. “You know who I am.” His pen scratches. “You are”—he checks a sheet—“Eiji Miyake.” He looks at me, waiting for a nod. I nod. “Miyake.” He pronounces my name as if it were a toxin found in his food. “Previously employed on an orange farm”—he shuffles sheets, and I recognize my writing—“on an island of no importance south of Kyushu. Most bucolic.” Above Aoyama are portraits of his distinguished forebears. I imagine them bickering over who will come alive every morning to pilot the office through another tiresome day. His office smells of sun-faded card files. A computer buzzes. Golf clubs shine. “Who hired you? The Sasaki woman?” I nod. A knock on the door, and his secretary appears with a tray of tea. “I am addressing a trainee, Mrs. Marui!” Aoyama speaks in an appalled hiss. “My ten thirty-five tea becomes my ten forty-five tea, does it not?” Careworn Mrs. Marui bobs an apology and withdraws. “Go over to that window, Miyake, look out, and tell me what you see.”
I do as he says. “A window cleaner, sir.”
The man is immune to irony. “Below the window cleaner.”
Trains pulling in and pulling out in the shadow of the Terminus Hotel. Mid-morning passengers. Luggage haulers. The milling, the lost, the late, the meeters, the met, the platform-cleaning machines. “Ueno Station, sir.”
“Tell me this, Miyake. What . . . is . . . Ueno Station?”
I am at a complete loss.
“Ueno Station,” Aoyama replays his grave spiel, “is an extraordinary machine. One of the finest-tuned timepieces in the land. In the world. And this fireproof, thiefproof office is one of the nerve centers. From this console I can access . . . nearly everything. Ueno Station is our lives, Miyake. You serve it, it serves you. It affords a timetabled career. You have the privilege to be a minute cog in this machine. Even I began in a position as lowly as yours; but with punctuality, hard work, integrity—” The phone rings and I stop existing. Aoyama’s face switches to a higher-watt glow. His voice beams. “Sir! What a pleasure—yes . . . indeed . . . indeed . . . A superb proposal. And may I venture to add— Yes, sir. Absolutely . . . at the membership brokerage? Priceless . . . superb . . . and may I propose—indeed, sir. Rescheduled for Friday? How true . . . we’re all very much looking forward to hearing how we performed, sir. Thank you, sir . . . indeed . . . And may I—” Aoyama replaces the handset and gazes at it.
After some seconds I cough politely.
Aoyama looks up. “Where was I?”
“Minute cogs and integrity, sir.”
“Integrity.” But his mind is no longer here. He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Your probationary period is six months. You will have the chance to take the Japan Railways examinations in March. So, the Sasaki woman hired you. I make no secret of the fact that she is not an ideal role model. She is one of these men-women. Never quit work, even after marriage. Her husband died—sad, of course—but people die all the time and she expects a man’s job by way of compensation. So, Miyake. Rectify your accent problem. Listen to NHK radio announcers. Dump the junk that modern magazines stuff your head with. If I ever see you with a stud in your ear, I shall fire you on the spot. In my day high schools trained young tigers. Now they turn out peacocks. You are dismissed.”
I give him a bow as I close the door, but he is watching empty space. The office outside is empty. The tray is on the side. To my own surpise, I lift the teapot lid and spit into it. This must be work-related stress.
The lost-property office is an okay place to work. I have to wear uncool Japan Railways overalls, but I finish at six sharp and Ueno Station is only a few stops down the line from Kita Senju, near Shooting Star. During my three-month probation period I get paid weekly, which suits me fine. I am lucky. Buntaro got me the job. When I got back from PanOpticon last Friday, he said he heard from a contact that there might be a job going there, and would I be interested? You bet, I said. Before I knew it I had an interview with Mrs. Sasaki. She is a stern old bird, a Tokyo version of my grandmother, but after talking for about twenty minutes she offered me the job. I spend the mornings cataloging—writing date/time/ train labels on the items collected by conductors and cleaners when the trains terminate, and housing them on the right metal rack. Mrs. Sasaki runs the lost-property office and deals with the high-value items in the side office—wallets, bank cards, jewelry—which have to be registered with the police. Suga trains me to do the low-value ones, stored in the back office. “Not much natural light in here, right?” says Suga. “But you can tell the month from what gets handed in. November to Feb.: skis and snowboards. March: diplomas. June is all wedding gifts. Swimsuits pile up in July. A decent rain will bring hundreds of umbrellas. Not the most inspiring job, but it beats leaping around a garage forecourt or delivering pizzas, imho.” Afternoons I spend on the counter, waiting for claimants or answering the phone. Rush hours are busiest, of course, but during mid-afternoon my job is almost relaxing. My memory is the most regular visitor.
The leaves are so green they are blue. Anju and I play our staring game: we stare at each other and the first one to make the other smile and look away wins. I make stupid faces but they bounce off her. Her Cleopatra eyes spark bronze. She wins—she always does—by bringing her eyes close to mine and opening wide. Anju returns to her higher branch and looks at the sun through a leaf. Then she hides the sun with her hand. The webby bit between her thumb and forefinger glows ruby. She looks out to sea. “The tide is coming in.”
“Going out.”
“Coming in. Your whalestone is diving.”
My mind is on miraculous soccer exploits.
“I really used to believe what you told me about the whalestone,” she says.
Bicycle kicks and diving headers.
“You spouted such rubbish.”
“Uh?”
“About it being magic.”
“What being magic?”
“The whalestone, hearing aid!”
“I never said it was magic.”
“You did. You said it was a real whale that the thunder god had turned into stone, and that one day when we were older we would swim out to it, and once we set foot on it the spell would be broken, and it would be so grateful that it would take us anywhere we wanted to go. Even to Mom and our father, if we told it to. I used to imagine it happening so hard that I could see it sometimes, like down a telescope. Mother putting on her pearls, and Father washing his car.”
“I never said all of that.”
“Did too. One of these days I’ll swim out to it.”
“No way could you ever swim that far. Girls can’t swim as well as boys.”
Anju aims a lazy kick at my head. “I could swim there, easy!”
“In your dreams. Way too far.”
“In your dreams.” Waves break at the foot of the gray humpback.
“Maybe it really is a whalestone,” I suggest. “A fossil one.”
Anju snorts. “It’s just a stupid rock. It doesn’t even look like a whale. And next time we go to the secret beach I’m going to show you and swim out there, me, and stand on it and laugh at you.”
The Kagoshima ferry crawls along the horizon.
“This time tomorrow—” I begin.
“Yeah, yeah, this time tomorrow you’ll be in Kagoshima. You’ll get up really early to catch the ferry, arrive at Kagoshima Junior High School at ten o’clock. The eighth graders, the seventh graders, then your match. Then you go to the restaurant of a hotel with nine floors and eat while you listen to Mr. Ikeda tell you why you lost. Then you come back on Sunday morning. You already told me a zillion times, Eiji.”
“Jealous? Twenty-two smelly boys kicking a bag of air on a square of muck?”
“You used to like soccer.”
“You used to wet our futon.”
Ouch. “You’re jealous because I’m going to Kagoshima and you’re not.”
Anju stays aloof.
The tree creaks. I didn’t expect Anju to lose interest in our argument so soon. “Watch,” she says. She stands up, feet apart, steadies herself, takes her hands away—
“Stop it,” I say,
and my sister jumps into empty air
my lungs wallop out a scream
Anju flashes by me
and lands laughing on a branch below, swinging down to a lower branch. I hear her laughter long after she has vanished in the leaves.
FUJIFILM says two o’clock has come and gone. A single night is stuffed with minutes, but they come undone and get blown away, one by one. My capsule is stuffed with Stuff. A shabby colony in the empire of stuff. An old TV, a rice-husk futon, a camping table, a tray of cast-off kitchen utensils courtesy of Buntaro’s wife, Machiko-san, cups containing fungal experiments, a roaring fridge with chrome trimmings. The fan. A pile of Screen magazines, off-loaded by Buntaro. All I brought from Yakushima was a backpack of clothes, my Discman, my Lennon CDs, and my guitar. Buntaro looked at my guitar doubtfully the day I arrived. “You don’t intend to plug that thing in anywhere, do you?” “No,” I answer. “Stay acoustic,” he warns. “Go electric on me, and you’re out. It’s in your lease.” I am not going to contact her. No way. She will try to talk me out of looking for my father. I wonder how long it will take for Cockroach to die. The glue trap is called a “cockroach motel,” and has windows, doors, and flowers printed on the side. Traitor cockroaches wave six arms—“Come in, come in!” It has an onion-flavored bait packet—curry, shrimp salad, and beef jerky are also available at all good Tokyo supermarkets. Cockroach greeted me when I moved in. It didn’t even bother pretending to be scared. Cockroach grinned. Who has the last laugh now? I have! No. It has. I can’t sleep. In Yakushima night means sleep. Not much else to do. Night does not mean sleep in Tokyo. Punks slalom down shopping malls. Hostesses stifle yawns and glance at their patrons’ Rolexes. Yakuza gangsters fight on deserted construction sites. High schoolers younger than me engage in gymnastic love-hotel sex bouts. In an apartment high above a fellow insomniac flushes a toilet. A pipe behind my head gargles.
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