It’s a short drive to what apparently is the swimming pool—a long building that seems to be constructed out of polished metal, glimmering in spite of the overcast day.
“We’re here,” he says, lighting up a cigarette.
“You smoke?” she says, getting out of the car. Jiro did too, but that’s like saying he had black hair. Nearly everyone here smokes, she knows that, yet somehow it surprises her with Moto.
He closes his door. “Only before I’m about to swim,” he says, his voice playful, as if he might be teasing her.
“It’s not good for you.”
“Yeah, well, breathing this crummy air probably isn’t good for me either.”
“I smoke only when I speak French,” she says, opening her luggage and digging out her suit and clean clothes.
Moto begins to laugh, as if this was the most hilarious thing he’s heard in a long time.
“And I only eat dark rye bread when I’m speaking German,” she says, laughing with him, which prompts her to go on, “and pickled herring when I speak Danish. I think I look my best when I’m speaking French. My clothes, my hair, my complexion, French brings out a shimmer.”
“Oh, you don’t look so bad speaking Japanese.”
“That’s kind of you.”
“And Japanese?”
She tells him it’s too humble, too yielding, too ready to get down on its knees and apologize for the smallest thing. “Everyone’s so polite here, always saying you’re sorry. Except you, of course.”
He laughs loudly.
“I meant that as a compliment, you know. But maybe it’s because you’re speaking English, a rather blunt language.”
“No. Doesn’t matter what language. I’m always impolite. And rude and loud and disrespectful, if you ask my brother. He says I offend everyone.” He picks up his swim bag. “My American friends who speak Japanese say it makes them aware of the other person. Your relationship to someone. You know, should you use honorific or standard or informal verb when you talk to someone? That kind of thing.”
“Yes, that too. The other person.”
Getting into the pool involves a procedure more suitable for entrance into the United Nations. Moto pulls out his membership card, which shows his picture—expressionless, staring straight at the camera. He produces his driver’s license with a similar photo, and she’s asked to do the same, in addition to paying the rather extravagant entrance fee. They must sign in, state their purpose (to swim), and walk through a security gate, which presumably will buzz if it detects too much metal on their persons.
Once they get inside, she sees what all the fuss is about. It’s not a pool. It’s a beach with fine white sand, blue waves rolling onto a shore, and the aroma of coconut suntan lotion drifting by. People are stretched out on bright, colorful beach towels, sitting under sun umbrellas. Straight ahead, a turquoise sea. All enclosed in a huge building.
The indoor sea went over so well in Miyazaki, says Moto, they built a smaller version here. Over by the lifeguard’s chair, there’s a statue of a monkey holding a cold drink. Down the way, a group of teens plays volleyball.
“Nature’s so unreliable,” she says. “Better to create your own sea.”
“After a while, you’ll forget it’s fake.”
He points to the women’s locker room. “You can swim,” he says, “or not.”
She watches him walk toward the men’s locker room, that flowing graceful gait again, his head not bobbing up and down like a normal human’s. She watches until he disappears.
She steps into the locker room. White floors, white walls, white benches, white lockers. Not just an off-white, a bright white, as if designed to make someone go a little blind. She quickly changes into her black one-piece suit, a piece of clothing she threw in her suitcase at the last minute, thinking she’d never use it, and studies herself in the mirror. Still trim, she can wear a bathing suit without embarrassment. For a moment, she tries to see herself from Moto’s point of view. No Midori, that’s for sure. But not too shabby. For a woman her age. She steps outside, or rather inside, onto the fake sand.
The shore is crowded with people, the water filled with swimmers. She sits alone on the white sand. She has no idea where Moto is. Her skin is ghostly pale, though most everyone is the same anemic coloring; the Japanese, like her, avoid the sun. She is self-conscious, like a bystander. Oddly, she starts to sweat. Maybe a heater is used to mimic the sun’s warmth.
Wading into the warm water (unnaturally warm), she can’t remember the last time she went swimming. She does the breast-stroke, but her legs are not kicking hard enough. And she’s out of breath. She floats on her back, until someone swims by, kicking hard, splashing drops of water on her face. She resumes the breast-stroke, her chin in the water, and tries to spot Moto. Is he the fanatical freestyle swimmer, charging just outside the waves in a beeline, then doing a flip turn? Or the steady one slowly raising his arm over his head, his hand a perfect cup, entering the water delicately, without a splash?
Jiro would be the charger, throwing himself into his strokes. Before she became ill, before he sent her away, Jiro had told his wife that if he ever became sick with no hope of recovery, he’d commit suicide. He wouldn’t put up with a withered body, a demented mind. She argued with him, a big fight. His life was valuable, even if he was ill, even if he was a vegetable. She’d love him regardless. She’d never let him kill himself, never! How ironic, then, when she became ill, she tried to end her own life. One never knows what one is capable of, thinks Hanne. You can only speak from the circumstances you currently find yourself in; change the circumstances and you might have an entirely different view of things.
Truthfully, she can’t say for sure that Moto would be the charger. She could just as easily see him floating on his back, staring at the ceiling just because he wanted to. She feels herself slowing down, her bottom half sinking. When a young woman swims right into her, hitting her shoulder, she has her excuse to swim to shore and get out. She stretches out on her towel.
A boy appears and sits about five yards from her. He’s looking at her. He looks away. Then back again. “This is a pen,” he says in English.
This is a pen? There is no pen. Not in his hand. Not in hers.
He repeats it, smiling bigger, clearly pleased with his statement. He must be seven or eight years old.
In Japanese, she tells him her name and unfortunately she doesn’t have a pen. “Sumimasen.” She raises both hands up in the air to show they are empty.
“Eigo ga dekimasu ka?” Do you speak English, he asks politely.
“Iie,” she says. No.
He looks at her, puzzled, then laughs and laughs.
She steps into the locker room. Quickly she strips off her wet suit and changes into her clothes. When she comes out, Moto is sitting in her spot, waiting. His wet hair is combed. Has he known her whereabouts the entire time? And decided to stay away? She tells him about the exchange with the boy.
“That phrase,” says Moto, “is one of the first English phrases that a young schoolboy learns. He wanted to practice and thought you were American or European.”
As they head to the car, she wonders: if not American or European, then what am I?
On their way home, Moto stops at a coffee shop. Even with his wet hair, T-shirt, and ragged jeans, he has celebrity status, as if dipped in gold. Though to Hanne he looks tired, those weary eyes, as if he’s played too hard. The young waitress flirts with him, giggling her way through their order. Another woman with perfectly coiffed hair waves hello. A third, who is passing by the shop, rushes in and says she’d love him to come to her dinner party. She stands so her bony hip brushes against the edge of the table, near his hand.
He could have his pick of women, thinks Hanne. Yes, he’s moved on and is probably sampling a wide range of women, like fine desserts. Not just Midori. Look at him smiling. He’s happy, playful, engaged; all is right in his world. Fifteen years of marriage and the world has opened up for him aga
in. Back in the social whirl.
The proprietor brings him a plate of mochi. “So nice to see you,” he says to Moto. Moto thanks him and scoots the plate toward Hanne.
Moto asks, “You asked about me. What about you, Hanne? You’re not married?”
“A widow.”
He looks at her for a long minute. “I’m sorry. Truly sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.”
Moto sips his coffee, watching her.
She shifts uncomfortably. “Like you, I’ve moved on.”
Back at the house, she heads to the cottage to hang up her wet bathing suit. When she returns to the main house, Renzo says Moto has left.
“To where?” Hanne says, trying to hide her disappointment.
Renzo shrugs.
She spends the rest of the afternoon working in the garden with Renzo. He’s determined to weed it out and plant vegetables—daikon, potatoes, burdock root, lotus root, and radishes. The dirt is dark, rich, suitable for planting. Hanne and her mother used to plant a garden every spring, no matter where they lived. Even if the garden was confined to a two-meter-by-two-meter swatch of poor soil. Her mother was a very determined woman.
That night she helps Renzo cook dinner. He teaches her how to make Japanese sweet potato cakes using cooked sweet potato, butter, sugar, eggs, flour, and a bit of cream. When she inquires again where Moto might be, Renzo shakes his head. “He’s a funny guy. He could be with Midori. Or a surprise visit to a friend. Or he might be at the library reading about van Gogh. He says if he could see as well as van Gogh did, he’d be a better actor. There’s times he watches me so closely, it’s almost like I feel his gaze rub against my skin. Have you noticed it?”
In fact, she has.
“That’s a good sign, don’t you think?” he says. “He’s preparing to return to the stage.”
“I hope so,” she says, thinking of Jiro’s return to the symphony. She’s aware that she’s listening for Moto. And there, she thinks she hears the front door open. She waits, expecting him to wander into the kitchen. But there is no one. A new wave of disappointment.
She mixes the ingredients together and puts cake-size blobs onto a greased cookie sheet. “Can I ask, has Moto always been so unanchored?”
Renzo is at the stove, stirring miso soup. “Unanchored? What does this mean?”
Unsettled, she wants to say, unbalanced, unhinged. “Drifting about. Following a whim.”
He thinks about it. “Yes, I think so. But when he was acting, he was anchored and unanchored. Acting out different characters, so he was drifting, as you say. But anchored to the role of actor no matter what. You see?”
Like Jiro. The wide landscape of human emotion washed over him when he played the violin, one series of notes leading into sadness, another into delight, but always anchored to the violin. He told his wife that when he played he felt fluid, the boundaries of himself evaporating, and he became everything. He was no longer himself, or maybe not only himself. “What a relief for you,” said his wife. “That you have a way to escape this world.”
She goes to bed in a good mood. Overall, she’s found no flaws in her translation. Moto is like her Jiro. Late that night, Hanne hears the dog barking. She gets out of bed and steps outside into the cold. A half moon casts light on the frosty ground. She smells the rich dirt from this afternoon’s digging in the garden. A breeze stirs and her white nightgown billows around her. She doesn’t see the dog anywhere. She’s about to step back inside when a car draws up in the driveway. A door slams. He’s walking toward her.
“Look at you in this moonlight,” says Moto, smiling. “What a shame my English is so lousy. Everything I can think of saying is a cliché.”
She smiles. “Best to remain quiet, then.”
“Your hair, with the moon stroking it, looks like black glass. Your gown glows like a sun ray. Your skin—”
“Okay. Enough,” she says, laughing. When she turns and he follows her into the cottage, she feels her old recklessness dust itself off. Lust, yes, he’s a very attractive man. Before Hiro, before marriage, she had plenty of sex for the sheer pleasure of it. Another appetite of the body was how she saw it. She reaches for his hand, a warm, firm hand that grips hers. Lust, she thinks and also curiosity—does he make love like Jiro?
He’s smooth, his chest hairless, as sleek as a stone. Like her Jiro. Moto smells of alcohol, but what does she care. A morning spent with him, and now the slow burn of desire has somewhere to go.
His hand finds the curve of her lower back, guiding her to the bed. “Not so guarded,” he murmurs in her ear. She turns him around, kisses him, feels the fullness of his lips, of him, tastes the bitterness of beer. He kisses her neck, fingers, until, restless, she pulls him on top of her. He takes his time, until she’s quivering under his fingers.
When they’re done, they lie in each other’s arms and listen to Morsel howl. Moto joins in.
“Stop, you’ll wake Renzo,” she says, laughing. She picks up Moto’s hand and fiddles with his fingers. It’s how she imagined sex with Jiro. Intense, passionate, playful.
“Spoilsport.” Grinning, he slips back into his clothes, bows low. “I depart.”
“Until we meet again.”
He heads out the door. The bed is too small for the two of them. Besides, she’d rather sleep alone.
Chapter Twelve
Outside, the weather is running itself through the tree branches, with the day gathering into a dense dull presence of rain clouds. Before she heads to the house, she makes the bed. How unexpected, she thinks, untangling the sheets, noting the wet spot. A nice unexpected, she admits, though she thinks it shouldn’t happen again. She’s here to observe, not become involved in something.
It’s early morning and the house is astonishingly cold. She buttons her sweater and steps into the eating room. Moto is there, busy sewing a button on a white shirt. Thankfully, he’s turned the heat on full blast. He offers her hot tea.
“You’re up early,” she says, cupping her hands around the mug.
He has a voice-over gig and has to go to Kurashiki to record it. “I’m trying to look halfway presentable,” he says, holding up the shirt.
“Another talent of yours?”
Renzo is the one with sewing skills, he says, but he has gone to Kojima to look at a tansu and visit friends.
“I’d like to hear you,” she says. “It sounds interesting.”
He shrugs, finishing a button. He snips off the thread. “Not much to it.”
It seems last night will be folded up, tucked away, forgotten. For the best, she thinks, sipping her tea. “Renzo really hates these voice-overs, doesn’t he?”
“I suppose.” He points to her sweater. Two buttons are missing. How hadn’t she noticed it? “I think I have a match,” he says, digging through his box of buttons. She hands it to him. He threads his needle, shaking his head and smiling, his birthmark bunching up like a pretty rose. “Renzo has this idea that our parents and all our ancestors, all the way back to the beginning of time are watching our every move and I’m disappointing each and every one of them.”
She smiles, thinking of her mother’s expression—a mixture of expectation and disappointment. “Isn’t it a given that we disappoint our parents?”
He reaches over and touches her hand. “A pleasure, last night.”
She nods. So it won’t be forgotten. Might it happen again? She finds herself unexpectedly hoping it will.
“So does that mean your children have disappointed you?” he says.
More rain clouds must have blown in because the room fills with a brownish light. She tells him about Tomas. Responsible, intelligent, driven, a good father and husband. “I could go on and on.”
“And Brigitte?”
She’s startled that he remembered her name. To hear someone else say it out loud, it makes her feel as though Brigitte is present, sitting at the table with them. “She’s on her own path. Isn’t that what every parent wants? A child who is out in
the world, doing what she wants to do?”
He leans forward with his elbows on the table, as if trying to get underneath her words. He’s waiting for her to say more, and the silence elongates until she feels the need to say more.
“For years she wanted to be a translator. Then it was a veterinarian, then an emergency medic, then a poet, and then the Peace Corps, then I forget. There were so many iterations of possible careers, I lost track. And she could have done any one of those things. A million other things too.”
“A girl with many interests,” he murmurs.
“That’s one way to put it.”
“How do you put it?”
“Oh, I don’t think about it anymore. We haven’t spoken in a long time. Six years.” That last part came out fast.
A pause. “That sounds hard.”
“In the beginning, but one learns to carry on.”
“How?”
“The way one does. Life isn’t beyond mending, Moto. As you know.”
Minutes go by, it seems. The wind picks up, rattling the windows. Her right leg feels incredibly hot. She must be too close to the heater. She shifts, but still her leg is burning. And now her stomach aches, as if it’s shrunken into a tight fist. His gaze is fixed on the fish tank behind her. His birthmark is an intense red, almost in the shape of a crescent moon. “She sounds like an artist, your daughter,” he says, as if speaking to himself.
“I suppose. There was that phase of poetry.”
“That’s not what I mean. She sounds like she’s struggled to find her place in the world. Sensitive people are like that. When a way of life isn’t working, you have to get rid of it. The alternative is to feel a part of you, a big part has been forgotten. Eventually it just dies off.”
Hanne feels slightly disoriented. Is he trying to tell her something about himself? Or does he suddenly claim to have special insight into Brigitte? “You didn’t struggle to find your place.” She says it as a statement, not a question.
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