When You Are Engulfed in Flames

by David Sedaris

  A minute later I was seated behind a closed door in a small white room.

  Q: Ueno koen __ ____ desu ka?

  A: Asoko desu!

  I had been fine all morning — in the apartment, on the subway, standing in line at the post office. It wasn’t as if I had never smoked, but I was able to put not smoking on a back burner. Now, though, under pressure to answer a dozen and a half test questions, I’d have gladly traded one of my eyes for a cigarette, even one that was not my brand. I’ve found that it helps to gently chew on my tongue, but that works only during standard cravings. For this one I needed to chew on someone else’s tongue — until it came off.

  Sitting there in that hot little room, I wished I’d taken the advice of my friend Janet, who filled a baby food jar with an inch of water and a half-dozen butts. This she carried around in her purse, and whenever she wanted a cigarette, she’d just unscrew the lid and take a whiff of what even the most enthusiastic smoker has to admit is pretty damn nasty. In times of weakness, it’s easy to forget why you ever wanted to quit. That’s why I should have kept that remote control. Even when the semen dried and flaked off, I think it would have served as a good reminder.

  Breathe in. Breathe out. It took a few minutes, but eventually I calmed down and realized that, thanks to my instructional CDs, I knew quite a few of these answers, at least in the fill-in-the-blank section. Then came the multiple-choice part, and I found myself blindly guessing. Capping it all off was an essay question, the subject being, “My Country, an Introduction.”

  “I am American, but now I live in other places sometimes,” I wrote. “America is big and not very ex-pensive.”

  Then I sat with my hands folded until an instructor came and led me back to the lobby. My test was graded in less than a minute, and when the woman behind the counter assigned me to the beginner’s class, I tried to act flattered, as if there was a sub-beginner’s class, and it had just been decided that I was too good for it.

  January 12

  In terms of stress and its connection to smoking, language school is probably not the best idea in the world. I thought of this yesterday morning as I headed to my first class. Our session ran from 9:00 to 12:45, and during that time we had two different teachers, both women and both remarkably kind. With Ishikawa-sensei we began at the beginning: Hello. Nice to meet you. I am Lee Chung Ha, Keith, Matthieu, and so on. Out of ten students, four are Korean, three are French, two are American, and one is Indonesian. I was luckily not the oldest person in the room. That’s a distinction that went to Claude, a history professor from Dijon.

  It’s sad, really. Put me in a classroom, and within five minutes it all comes back: the brownnosing, the jealousy, the desire to be the best student, and the reality that I’ve never been smart enough. “Stop talking,” I write in my notebook. “It’s only the first day. Don’t exhaust people yet.”

  I like Sang Lee, the seventeen-year-old Korean girl who sits in the second row. Actually, “like” is probably not the right word. More than that, I need her, need someone who’s worse than I am, someone I can look down on. Because this class is for beginners, I didn’t think that anyone would know the hiragana alphabet. A character or two, maybe, but certainly not the entire thing. When it turned out that everyone knew it, everyone but me and this little idiot Sang Lee, I was devastated.

  “Where did you learn this?” I asked one of the French students.

  And he said, very matter-of-factly, “Oh, I just picked it up.”

  “A flu is something you ‘just pick up,’” I told him. “The words to a song in Spanish. But a forty-six character alphabet isn’t learned unless you specifically sit down and stuff it inside your head.”

  “Picked it up,” indeed. I know two characters. That’s it. Only two. This puts me two ahead of that lovable nitwit, Sang Lee, but still, it’s not much of a lead.

  January 13

  As school continues, so does the parade of new teachers. We had two different ones yesterday, Ayuba-sensei and Komito-sensei. Both were patient and enthusiastic, but neither could match the exuberance of Thursday’s Miki-sensei. At one point, she asked me how to say the number six. I hesitated a little too long, and out of the corner of her mouth, she whispered, “Roku.”

  “Come again?”

  She whispered it a second time, and when I successfully repeated after her, she applauded with what looked like genuine sincerity and told me I had done really, really well.

  January 16

  Just before 3:00 a.m. I awoke to find our bed moving. “Earthquake!” I yelled. Hugh sat up at the sound of my voice, and together we gawked at the gently swaying curtains. There was no time to stand, much less run for cover, but I remember thinking how unfair it would be to die two weeks after I quit smoking.

  January 17

  I was in the school break room with Christophe-san yesterday, and the two of us got to talking about vending machines, not just the ones before us, but the ones outside as well. “Can you believe it?” he asked. “In the subway station, on the street, they just stand there, completely unmolested.”

  “I know it,” I said.

  Our Indonesian classmate came up, and after listening to us go on, he asked what the big deal was.

  “In New York or Paris, these machines would be trashed,” I told him.

  The Indonesian raised his eyebrows.

  “He means destroyed,” Christophe said. “Persons would break the glass and cover everything with graffiti.”

  The Indonesian student asked why, and we were hard put to explain.

  “It’s something to do?” I offered.

  “But you can read a newspaper,” the Indonesian said.

  “Yes,” I explained, “but that wouldn’t satisfy your basic need to tear something apart.”

  Eventually, he said, “Oh, OK,” the way I do when moving on seems more important than understanding. Then we all went back to class.

  I reflected on our conversation after school, as I hurried down a skyway connecting two train stations. Windows flanked the moving sidewalks, and on their ledges sat potted flowers. No one had pulled the petals off. No one had thrown trash into the pots or dashed them to the floor. How different life looks when people behave themselves — the windows not barred, the walls not covered with graffiti-repellent paint. And those vending machines, right out in the open, lined up on the sidewalk like people waiting for a bus.

  January 18

  In my how-to-quit-smoking book, the author writes that eating is not a substitute for cigarettes. He repeats this something like thirty times, over and over, like a hypnotist. “Eating is not a substitute for smoking. Eating is not a substitute for smoking . . .” I repeat it myself while looking through the refrigerator and grimacing at the crazy stuff Hugh brought home yesterday: things like pickled sticks, or at least that’s what they look like. Everything is dark brown and floating in murky syrup. Then there’s this fish wrapped up in paper. It’s supposed to be dead, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s simply been paralyzed. My new thing is the Cozy Corner, a Western-style coffee shop next to the Tamachi train station. I pointed to something in the bakery case last Saturday, and the woman behind the counter identified it as shotokeki. This, I’ve come to realize, is Japanese for shortcake.

  January 19

  We were given a dictation quiz yesterday, and I found myself wanting to cry. It’s not just that I’m the worst student in the class, it’s that I’m clearly the worst student in the class, miles behind that former dope, Sang Lee. What makes it that much harder to bear is the teacher’s kindness, which has come to feel like pity. “You can keep your book open,” Miki-sensei told me, but even that didn’t help. Instead of kyoshi I wrote quichi. Instead of Tokyo, I wrote doki, as in tokidoki, which means “sometimes.” “It’s all right,” Miki-sensei said. “You’ll get it eventually.”

  After dictation we opened our books and read out loud. Mae Li breezed right along, as did Indri and Claude. Then came my turn. “Who . . . whose . . .
book . . . is . . .”

  “This,” Sang Lee whispered.

  “Whose book is this?” I continued.

  “Good,” the teacher said. “Try the next line.”

  I could hear the rest of the class groan.

  “Is . . . it . . . you . . . your book . . .”

  Buying a bottle of shampoo and discovering later that it’s actually baby oil is bad, but at least that’s a private humiliation. This is public, and it hurts everyone around me. Don’t call on David-san, don’t call on David-san, I can feel my classmates thinking. When we team up for exercises, I see that look, meaning, “But it’s not fair. I had to be with him last time.”

  I went through this with French school but never knew how easy I had it. Certain letters might not be pronounced, but at least it’s the same alphabet. I was younger then, too, and obviously more resilient. I left yesterday’s class with one goal — to find a secluded place, sit down, and treat myself to a nice long cry. Unfortunately, this is Tokyo, and there is no secluded place — no church to duck into, no park bench hidden in the shadows.

  It didn’t help any that I got off the subway at Shin-juku. Two million people a day pass through the station. Then they scatter to office towers and department stores, to clogged streets and harshly lit underground malls. I’m always wanting to compare an area to Times Square. Then I walk a mile or so, and come to another, even more crowded area. On and on, and with each new neighborhood I feel ever more insignificant. It’s like looking at a sky full of stars and knowing for a fact that each one is not just inhabited, but overpopulated, the message being: you are less than nothing.

  It’s probably for the best that I didn’t cry. A lot of people feel that smoking and drinking go together. “The two are inseparable,” they insist. I guess I feel the same way about tears. Unless you can follow a good weep with a cigarette, there’s really no use doing it.

  January 21

  Every so often I forget that I’ve quit smoking. I’ll be on the subway or in a store and think, Ah, a cigarette, that should solve everything. Then I’ll put my hand to my pocket and, after the panic that comes with finding nothing, I’ll remember that I’ve given it up, and I’ll feel a crushing little blow. It’s like being told some piece of horrible news, but on a smaller scale, not “the baby is going to die,” but “not all of the baby’s hair is going to make it.” Ten times a day this happens. I forget and then I remember.

  January 23

  “If you want to quit smoking, you have to return to the person you were before you started.” Someone told me this a few months ago, and I assumed that he was joking. Now I see that, like it or not, I am reverting to my twenty-year-old self, at least scholastically. Yesterday morning we took a hiragana test. Out of a possible 100 points, I received 39. It was the worst grade in the class, but still the teacher decorated my paper with a fanciful sticker and the message, “Cheers up!!!”

  “That’s a very bad score,” Claude-san told me. He himself had received a perfect 100, and as he headed off to celebrate with a cigarette, I looked at him and thought, Loser.

  January 25

  According to the book I read, after three weeks without smoking, I’m supposed to feel elation. Yippee, I should be thinking. I’m free! Yesterday marked my three-week anniversary, but instead of feeling joyful I felt weak and opened my mind to the possibility of having a cigarette. Just one, I thought. Just to prove that they’re not as good as I remember them being.

  Then I thought of the supermarket in the basement, and of the convenience store across the street. I could buy a pack of Kool Milds, take just one, and throw the rest away. Imagining how it would taste — the almost medicinal punch at the back of my throat — literally made my mouth water, and for the first time since quitting I saw the hopelessness of it. A person gives up smoking, and then what? Spends the rest of his miserable life wanting a cigarette? It wasn’t like that with drinking, but then again, I have a life to lead, things to do, and being drunk kept getting in the way. Unlike alcohol, a cigarette casts no immediate shadow. Smoke one, smoke five or twenty, and you can not only function, you can function better, unless, I mean, you’re chopping down trees or resuscitating someone, two things I hardly ever do anymore. Just one cigarette, I thought. Just one.

  It’s embarrassing, but what got me through my moment of weakness was the thought of the Four Seasons in Santa Barbara. Its regular rooms are pretty swank, but even better are the private cottages. I stayed in one once, back when you could still smoke, and was struck by how comfortable it felt, how much like a real home. Most hotels are fairly spartan. Anything not nailed down is likely to be stolen, so it’s just the bed, the desk, the mindless abstract print bolted to the wall: the basics. These cottages, though, they look like little houses lived in by gentle rich people. Cashmere lap blankets, Arts and Crafts bowls — it’s not exactly my taste, but who cares? My cottage had a fireplace, and, if I remember correctly, there was an iron poker and a pair of tongs hanging from a rack beside the hearth. It’s such a faggy thing to think about — the fireplace tongs at the Four Seasons in Santa Barbara — but there you have it. I thought of them for a minute or two, and then I was fine, the craving had passed, which is another thing they told me in the book I read: just hold on.

  January 26

  It’s hard to put a finger on our neighborhood. Crammed between the office towers are a good number of apartment buildings. I just can’t figure out who lives in them. Are the people wealthy? Middle class? A woman can wear a tattered dress over two pairs of pants, and it looks to me like Comme des Garçons, last season maybe, but still smart and expensive. Along the canals there are simple two- and three-story houses. Were they in America, you could casually peep through the windows, but here, on the off chance that the curtains are open, you’re likely to see the back side of a dresser or bookshelf. Even in homes facing the park, people have their windows obscured. Either that, or the glass is textured. I noticed the same thing when we went to the country. Here’s a village of twenty houses, and you can’t look into a single one of them.

  Likewise, people cover their books with patterned, decorative jackets so you can’t see what they’re reading. In the rest of the world, if you’re curious about someone, all you have to do is follow him for a while. Within a few minutes his cell phone will ring, and you’ll learn more than you ever wanted to know. Here, of course, there’s a considerable language barrier, but even if I were fluent it wouldn’t help me any. After three weeks I have yet to see a single bus or subway passenger talking on a cell phone. People do it on the street sometimes, but even there they whisper and cover their mouths with their free hands. I see this and wonder, What are you hiding?

  January 27

  It might be different for actual Japanese people, but as a visitor I am regularly overwhelmed by how kind and accommodating everyone is. This woman at our local flower shop, for instance. I asked her for directions to the monorail, and after she patiently gave them to me I decided to buy a Hello Kitty bouquet. What it basically amounts to is a carnation with pointed ears. Add two plastic dots for the eyes and one more for the nose, and you’ve got a twenty-dollar cat. “Cute,” I said, and when the florist agreed, I supersized the compliment to “very cute.”

  “You speak with skill,” she told me.

  Drunk with praise, I then observed that the weather was nice. She said that it certainly was, and after paying I headed for the door. Anywhere else I’d say good-bye when exiting a shop or restaurant. Here, though, I use a phrase I learned from my instructional CD. “Now I am leaving,” I announce, and the people around me laugh, perhaps because I am stating the obvious.

  January 30

  Following yesterday’s midmorning break, the teacher approached me in the hallway. “David-san,” she said, “I think you homework chotto . . .”

  This means “a little” and is used when you don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings.

  “You think it’s chotto what?” I asked. “Chotto bad?”
/>   “No.”

  “Chotto sloppy? Chotto lazy?”

  The teacher pressed her hands together and regarded them for a moment before continuing. “Maybe, ah, maybe you don’t understand it so much,” she said.

  I used to laugh at this Japanese indirectness, but now I see that there’s a real skill, not just to using it, but to interpreting it. At 11:00 we changed teachers. Miki-sensei walked in carrying her books and visual aids and went on to explain how to ask for things. If you want, for example, to borrow some money, you ask the other person if he or she has any. If you want to know the time, you ask if the other person has a watch.

  I raised my hand. “Why not just ask for the time?”

  “Too much directness,” Miki-sensei said.

  “But the time is free.”

  “Maybe. But in Japan, not a good idea.”

  After school I went to the Cozy Corner with Akira, who spent many years in California and now works as a book translator. We both ordered shotokeki, and as we ate he observed that, as opposed to English, Japanese is a listener’s language. “What’s not being mentioned is usually more important than what is.”

  I asked him how I’d compliment someone on, say, his shirt. “Do I say, ‘I like the shirt you’re wearing’ or ‘I like your shirt’?”

  “Neither,” he told me. “Instead of wasting time with the object, you’d just say ‘I like,’ and let the other person figure out what you’re talking about.”

  Our teachers offer much the same advice. Give them a sentence, and they’ll immediately trim off the fat. “No need to begin with I, as it is clear that you are the one talking,” they’ll say.

  The next session of Japanese class begins on February 8, and I’ve just decided not to sign up for it. Should I announce this in advance, I wonder, or would that be too wordy and direct? Maybe it’s best just to walk out the door and never return. I’ll feel guilty for a day or two, but in time I’ll get over it. The way I see it, I came here to quit smoking. That’s my first priority, and, as long as I don’t start again, I can consider myself, if not a success, then at least not a complete failure.