Penguin Highway

by Tomihiko Morimi

  “I don’t have that,” he fumed, getting mad. “I only had a filling fall out! My mom said so.”

  “That’s just what mothers tell you to make you relax. I mean, if they said you were going to have all your teeth pulled, most kids would be too scared to go to the dentist. But I think you have the right to know what they’re about to do to you.”

  “Seriously…?”

  “The only way to stop the disease from progressing is to pull every last tooth. If the germs get past your gums and into your body, your face will puff up like a manju. You’ll get a high fever, and bitter-tasting things like enoki mushrooms will sprout from the gaps between your teeth. Nobody will be able to recognize you. You’ll suffer and then die. It’s a rare disease from Europe, and the government’s in a panic about it spreading. You must have seen it in the papers.”

  “I don’t read any newspapers…”

  “I definitely recommend asking the dentist to pull all your teeth fast. It’s better than having mushrooms growing out of your mouth, right? If you can put up with the pain for a month or so, it’s easy.”

  By the time the receptionist called Suzuki’s name, Emperor Suzuki I’s face was frozen stiff. He went off to the examination room, and a little while after that, the lady came out. Before the door closed, I could hear Suzuki crying softly. I kept reading my magazine, and the lady sat down next to me. She smelled good.

  “Hey now, kiddo,” she said, taking the magazine from me. “Why would you say something like that?”

  “Something like what?”

  “You little liar. You fed Suzuki quite a story. Poor thing.”

  “Poor thing? You should be feeling sorry for Uchida.”

  “Who in the world is Uchida?”

  “I’m not telling. This is between me and him.”

  “Oh, you’re evil! You’ve even learned to deflect!”

  Shaking her head, she flopped down on the couch, muttering “Such a snot,” and began flipping through the magazine on her lap.

  “Hey,” the receptionist prompted.

  “Hold on,” she said, not looking up from the page. “I’m busy teaching this one a lesson.”

  But she just kept reading the magazine.

  I put my hands on my knees, sitting upright. I glanced sideways at her. She was nodding to herself, making noises of agreement, just like she always did when I found her reading at Seaside Café. Like she’d completely forgotten I was there. The clock’s ticking was very loud. The receptionist looked worried. I started to wonder if the dentist was going to come out and yell at her for slacking off at work.

  “Maybe it wasn’t very grown-up of me,” I admitted.

  “Well, you aren’t a grown-up,” the lady said, not looking up. “So do what you want.”

  “Suzuki does mean things to him, but Uchida didn’t ask me to get revenge for him. So I don’t think I have a right to pay Suzuki back in Uchida’s place. I should’ve at least discussed it with Uchida before doing anything.”

  “You always make everything so complicated! Oh, there it is. See? Look—right here.”

  The page she was staring at was a photo of a rock completely covered in penguins. She snorted. “Penguins are a total mystery. I don’t get it,” she said. It occurred to me to talk to her about the penguin incident that morning. After all, it had happened in the empty lot right next to the dentist. But she said, “I like penguins. I like blue whales and platypuses, too.”

  So without thinking, I said, “Ornithorhynchus anatinus, right?”

  “What?” she asked, confused.

  “Platypuses.”

  “What about them?”

  “The scientific name is Ornithorhynchus anatinus. I saw it in a book.”

  “Huh. Who knew? But that fact is completely meaningless before their bizarre cuteness.”

  “True enough.”

  “I’d better take this with me,” she announced, and she tore the page right out of the magazine. She looked down at what was now her photo. “They’re kinda like you,” she observed. “Tiny, but with attitude.”

  By the time they were done with my teeth, the sun was starting to set, and the town had turned gold.

  I left the dentist and went into the vacant lot next door. I wanted to investigate the penguin-emergence grounds once more. The savannah-like grass was still swaying in the wind, but there wasn’t a single penguin left. The grown-ups must have put them on a truck and taken them away somewhere. The vacant lot felt even emptier than before.

  I went to the middle of the lot and looked up at the sky, feeling like a pebble rolling around a vast, open plain. But that was only a metaphor. Even I can’t imagine a pebble’s emotional state.

  The blue of the sky looked as if someone was mixing cream into it. I’d seen similar skies in the planetarium at the Space and Science Museum. There was a vapor trail slicing across the dome-like expanse and a small passenger plane at the fore of it. As I watched, the plane traced a smooth arc across the sky, slowly expanding its trail.

  Watching the little silver fleck slowly drawing a line across the sky was fascinating, so I stood there gazing up for quite a long time. Until my neck started hurting. Every time I see a vapor trail, I can’t help but stare. Uchida and I had agreed we’d go see a space shuttle launch someday, but I felt that if I saw something that amazing, my neck might never go back to its original position.

  I wondered what the penguins were doing now. Why had they suddenly come here? I definitely had to investigate this matter further.

  I locked my hands together behind me like Sherlock Holmes and began pacing the ground. I could see the windows of the dentist office across the lot. The lady’s face appeared in one, grinning at me.

  She mouthed “Snot” at me. She was definitely underestimating me on account of my age. She didn’t know how much the work I put in every day was improving my mind.

  “She’ll soon see!” I muttered.

  The cool breeze brushing across the grass carried the scent of curry from some nearby kitchen. Maybe it was even coming from my own family’s kitchen. I felt like I could see my mother standing at the back door waving.

  I suddenly felt very hungry. And even a bit sleepy.

  I asked my mother over dinner, and she confirmed that a truck had come and taken the penguins away. I imagined them all lining up and filing onto the truck.

  “Mommy, where’d the penguins come from?” my sister asked.

  “I really don’t know,” my mother said unhurriedly. She was never one to rush anything. “Maybe someone abandoned them there. You know how people abandon pets sometimes.”

  “Poor abandoned penguins!”

  My sister could be nice sometimes.

  And with that, the day ended. But the penguin incident was far from over.

  The next day, we learned that the penguins had vanished from the truck that had been transporting them. When it arrived at its destination, the staff opened the back and found not a single penguin inside. This was an extremely curious turn of events—curious enough that it made the papers. I cut out the article and pasted it in my notebook.

  And astonishingly, the penguins reappeared in town. According to my records, penguins were spotted on both Wednesday and Friday of that week alone.

  The Wednesday incident occurred at noon. A line of penguins had come walking out of Kamonohashi Park and were struck by a car while crossing the highway. The penguins were flung away, rolling across the asphalt, but then stood up and ran off as if nothing had happened. It was clear these penguins were incredibly tough.

  The Friday incident occurred in the morning. A bunch of penguins entered Yoshida’s yard on the same block as the dentist’s office. Their dog started barking, though, and the penguins ran away. Yoshida’s dog had bitten one of them but then started whining. It was its first time biting a penguin, so it must have been surprised.

  On my way home from school, I checked the locations of the penguin sightings several times and looked up information about penguins
at the library, but I didn’t find any useful clues. The mystery only deepened.

  Saturday started out busy.

  Preoccupied with a loose tooth, I sat at my desk trying to collate my research. This involved lining up the notes I’d taken so far on my desk, indexing the entries, and rereading them. Anything that struck me as important I cleaned up and wrote down in a new section of notes. This was my research process. This approach allowed me to make all sorts of discoveries. I had lots of similar indexes—The Suzuki Empire, Project Amazon, The Lady, Selfish Sister Summaries, etc.

  That day, I went through my notes, making a new index. I called it Penguin Highway. This was a collection of my notes related to the penguins. I had read in a book that penguins always follow a specific route from the water to the land, and these routes are called penguin highways. I liked that turn of phrase, so I decided to call my research into the appearances “Penguin Highway research.”

  In the afternoon, I worked on a space station I was making out of LEGOs, then I studied chess for a while. I’d promised to play chess with the lady from the dentist’s office at Seaside Café that evening.

  She liked to joke around a lot, but deep down, she was a hard worker with a lot of potential. After she finished work on Saturday, she always spent the rest of the day studying. I wasn’t sure what she was studying, but she would sit in the café window all night, taking notes and reading books. While she did this, she would narrow her eyes as if the light was too bright, furrow her brow, and often nod to herself.

  When I left for Seaside Café, the lady was almost done with her studying. I walked through the neighborhood to the main road, and as I got closer to the brightly lit Seaside Café, I saw her sitting in her usual seat. For some reason, this made me extremely happy.

  I spent exactly one hour learning chess from her.

  A girl in my class, Hamamoto, was working hard to make chess popular. I’d never played chess with Hamamoto but had been fond of it for some time. I liked the way the pieces lined up perfectly in their squares. I liked picking up the castles and horses and moving them around, and I liked talking to the lady as we played. I told her all about the things I’d written in my notes. She was impressed sometimes, but odds were much higher she’d just say “Hmm” and keep glaring at the board. Sometimes that elevated to a “Huh.” It was extremely rare to elicit a “Wow.”

  That day, she was wearing a thin sweater the color of fava beans. I took my eyes off the board and looked at her breasts, admiring the way they rose from her chest like two hills.

  “C’mon, kiddo. Eyes on the chessboard.”

  “They are.”

  “They aren’t.”

  “They are.”

  “You’re just looking at my boobs.”

  “Am not.”

  “Are you looking, or aren’t you?”

  “I am, and I’m not.”

  “I’m seriously worried about your future.”

  She won the first chess game, and I won the second. “We’re evenly matched,” she said.

  I lectured her on penguins. There were lots of types of penguins. Emperor penguins, gentoo penguins, etc. I told her about the rookeries they formed to warm their eggs. About the penguin highways. The lady said, “Huh.” She knew about the penguin incidents. “Truth is stranger than fiction,” she said, laughing. “What’s your theory? Where do you think they come from?”

  “I need more information.”

  “I think aliens brought them.”

  “I can’t deny the possibility, but I see no reason for them to bother doing that.”

  “Invasion, what else. Penguins are adorable, right? They can lure earthlings in, make us let our guard down, and then—poof! They’ve toppled governments.”

  “I see. A viable hypothesis.”

  She shot me a frightening look. “Don’t mock me. I’ll pull your teeth out.”

  If only I could slow down the workings of my brain so I could stay up later. Unfortunately, by eight, I was always really sleepy. The chess pieces were getting blurry. I started nodding off, and the lady said, “Yo! You getting sleepy?”

  “Am not.”

  “Again with the lies!”

  “I use my brain a lot, so I get sleepy easily.”

  “I’m jealous. I often can’t fall asleep.”

  “What’s it like being up in the middle of the night?”

  “Everything gets this really mystical vibe. Well, it’s nothing kids need to know about.”

  The lady started putting the chess pieces away, which made me very sad. I wasn’t sure why, but I often got very sad when I got sleepy.

  “You’d better get home. They’re late coming to fetch you, huh?”

  “I’m still fine. I’m awake.”

  “Sleep does the body good. Go to bed, kiddo.” She nodded to herself. “Sleep well and grow up fast.”

  Soon, the door rattled open, and my father came to get me. It was dangerous to walk home alone in the dark, so I’d promised to always wait until he came to pick me up. The sound of the door sliding open made me hit peak sadness and peak sleepiness. There was no getting around it, either.

  My father bowed his head to my chess mate, and she smiled back. She always acted much more grown-up when interacting with him.

  “Hope he wasn’t too much trouble,” my father said.

  “Not at all. It was my pleasure. Aoyama’s a bright boy.”

  “See?” I said.

  The lady said good night, and my father and I walked home through the darkness.

  I was so sleepy, I forgot to brush my teeth that evening. How wretched. I really needed to be able to manage myself better. When would I be grown-up enough to handle this sleepiness? Would I ever learn to brush my teeth diligently so I could become a proper adult with shiny-white permanent teeth?

  On Sunday, I woke at eight and went to buy breakfast from the bakery at Seaside Café.

  It was a very beautiful day, and the bright morning sun shone through the zelkovas. My father bought four pastries and a large baguette. It was my job to carry the loaf of French bread, feeling the warmth of it through the paper bag. We left the top of the bag open so the baguette wouldn’t get soggy. It smelled amazing.

  We walked back past the row of trees, and I thought about how the lady was probably at church now. The lady went to the small church next to Kamonohashi Park. I’d been inside it once myself.

  Back at the house, my parents got breakfast ready while I went to wake up my sister. If we left her to her own devices, she would never wake up, no matter what. Like she was still a baby. But whenever I tried to make her get up, she was always really selfish and wouldn’t get out of bed. She really baffles me sometimes. But I know she doesn’t mean to.

  After breakfast, my father said he had work to do, so he went off to Seaside Café. When he did this, he always took his grid-lined notebook and fountain pen and lots of documents all stuffed into a transparent briefcase. Someday, I want to own a transparent briefcase filled with my own research and go to all kinds of places to study it.

  I holed up in the second-story laboratory (my room) and continued work on my space station. I had studied photographs of the real space station and was building one that looked just like it. I had only a finite number of bricks, though, which caused me no end of grief. I needed a lot more white ones. While I was desperately searching through the bricks, a warm breeze came through the window, and I heard my sister’s and mother’s voices as they worked in the garden.

  After the three of us ate lunch, Uchida came over. We’d agreed to go exploring that day.

  Like I always did when I went exploring, I had my rucksack with me. It had lined notebooks, a compass, a small blanket, a folding umbrella, a thermos my mother filled with tea (and sugar), and emergency provisions. The emergency provisions had been brought back from America by my father on one of his trips. A small amount of beef jerky—very tasty and extremely nutritious. But no matter how tasty it was, you could only eat the emergency provisions i
n real emergencies. This was the tragic nature of emergency provisions.

  “Be careful,” my mother and sister said as we left.

  Our expedition team set off through the neighborhood. The Sunday afternoon streets were very quiet, and the sunlight was warm. A cat stepped out from a hedge and stopped to watch us.

  As we walked, we talked about outer space.

  Uchida told me about the birth of the universe, cosmic inflation, black holes, and things like that. I talked about the space shuttle and the space station and the space elevator. I liked the water tower on the hill because it looked like an escape pod for leaving the planet. When I started talking about exploring distant stars in a spaceship, Uchida expressed concern that our spaceship would fall into a black hole. He thought about black holes a lot. “When the water runs out of the bath, it’s like a black hole. Scary, huh?” he said. Uchida was very interesting.

  The hill with the large water tower on top of it was to the east of the neighborhood.

  The area around the hill was all forest not yet marked for development. The forest was filled with little paths, and there was no telling where they would take you. One of our key missions was to make a map of these trails.

  We went up the concrete stairs to the water tower. It was a giant round tank surrounded by a tall fence. There were NO TRESPASSING signs plastered everywhere with pictures of drowning children on them. These were always a little alarming.

  The deep forest spread out beyond the water tower.

  Each time the warm breeze swept over the hill, the forest moved. If a really strong gust hit it, the whole forest would rustle.

  Uchida said he wanted to take a photo of the water tower, so we elected to pursue individual investigations. Uchida moved around, looking for a good angle. I began taking notes on the view of town from the hill.

  In the distance were the mountains that marked the edge of the prefecture. There were green hills all over the place. The roofs on the tight rows of houses sparkled in the sunlight. Against the side of the hill was an apartment building that looked like shortcake. I could see the pointy steeple of the church where the lady prayed. The eye was naturally drawn to the giant shopping mall. The highway ran through all of this like it was stitched across the neighborhood, and the lights moving along it were cars. From on top of this hill, I could see trees in town and on far-off hills, all swaying in the breeze. The sound of it didn’t travel this far, but I could clearly see the wind’s progress through the entire town.