by Susan Barker
‘I am very sorry to hear this, Mariko,’ I said.
Mariko laughed, perhaps to set me at ease. ‘It is quite funny when you think about it. When I was naughty at elementary school my teacher would send me to the headmistress. More often than not, the headmistress would find me fast asleep on the chair outside her office.’
‘I have seen a documentary about this condition,’ I said.
Mariko smiled. ‘It is very rare. Exams, emotional upset, earthquakes: all of these things will send me into the deepest slumber.’
Darkness had filled the kitchen like a swarm of silent bees. Across the table Mariko looked much older than her years.
‘I expect it must be very frightening for you,’ I said.
‘Not really. I try to control it sometimes, by tricking my mind into thinking it is relaxed. But it doesn’t always work. Last night I received some bad news and . . . well, there was nothing I could do to prevent another episode.’
The bad news must have been the death of her father. I wondered if she remembered telling me about it. I decided not to mention it for fear of her losing consciousness again.
‘Is there any medication you can take to control it?’
Mariko shook her head. ‘Not even a packet of caffeine tablets can keep me awake.’
‘How awful.’
‘You get used to it.’ The warmth of her smile showed me that she had made peace with her unfortunate condition. ‘Shall I turn on the light?’
Mariko rose from the table and before I knew it the room had sprung into brightness. I sat flinching as she lifted the shopping basket from the floor and moved to the counter.
‘Well, I must hurry up and cook for you. You must be hungry.’
‘Perhaps I should cook, Mariko,’ I said. ‘You are the guest, after all.’
‘Ah, but I have a special recipe I want you to try,’ Mariko breezily insisted.
It was then that I realized she still hadn’t told me why she had come to our house. I went to the fridge and took out a pitcher of barley tea. I watched Mariko empty the contents of the shopping basket onto the counter. Despite it being late in the day for the market, everything looked of excellent quality: fresh buckwheat noodles, shiitake mushrooms, peppers, onions and chicken breasts. She put on the checkered apron and secured the strings tightly behind her back. Then she took the wooden chopping board from the drying rack and selected a long, slender knife.
‘Perfect,’ she said, admiring the blade. She began to rinse the vegetables under the tap.
‘Mariko,’ I said, ‘how did you find your way to our house?’
When she heard the question she turned the tap off. She did not turn round. Instead she stood with her back to me, perfectly still. ‘I wish I could remember,’ she said softly. ‘But I can’t.’
16
MARY
The blue pick-up slows as it approaches me in my hitch-hiking stance. Two builders sit in the front, rough-hewn of face and leathery of skin. Relieved, I lower my thumb, but see they only want to rubberneck. The driver leans out of the window. ‘Hey, blondie!’ he shouts, and his sidekick hoots with laughter. The truck bumps off into the distance, a loose corner of the tarpaulin in the back fluttering me a goodbye wave. I move to the middle of the road and give them the finger. I normally conduct myself with more decorum, but I am having a bad day.
I feel like I’ve been walking on this road for ever. I swear, the next car that doesn’t stop will get a rock thrown at its tail-lights. I am sick of the sight of paddy-fields and this sun blistering my skin. The need to see Yuji is a powerful, physical ache. It’s the only thing that stops me from lying down in the ditch and having a good cry.
A travelling salesman picks me up. He is peddling pet toilets and gives me the spiel about them all the way to Shinsaibashi (he says it takes only three days to teach an average dog how to use the flush; an intelligent cat you can teach in an hour). I like him, mainly because he is cheerfully oblivious to the fact I look like I’ve spent the night in a hedge. Also, his sales-pitch nonsense is soothing as white noise. When he drops me off I take his card and promise to spread the pet-toilet gospel.
Amerika-mura is dense with people. Shoppers, pamphleteers, and surly microcosms of Goths and skaters. I slip into a noisy side street, where every shop blasts out its own soundtrack to shop by. Sugary pop anthems lure teenage girls into 100-yen shops, Serge Gainsbourg croons from a vintage-clothing store. Among the fashion emporiums sits a love hotel, about as discreet as a rabid dog. The Statue of Liberty towers over the entrance, torch aloft, as she doles out mechanical winks to passers-by. Yuji and I once spent the night there, in the Rock ’n’ Roll suite. A statuette of Elvis came out of the wall and sang ‘Love Me Tender’ every time you sat on the bed.
I cut through the alley behind Mos Burger, to the bar strip. Everywhere you look, rubbish stews in black bags, listlessly awaiting collection. The strip is dismal by day, just killing time till dusk, when it is reanimated by neon and bar-crawlers. The only living creature I see, other than the rats, is the grilled-eel-restaurant chef. Stooped in the doorway, he sucks his cigarette and watches me through his sow eyes. Lacking the will to mime cheer, our stares clash vacantly. His apron is splotched with rust-coloured stains, as though he spent the morning in an abattoir.
Mama-san stands in the doorway, in a robe of red silk. I have never seen the grande dame without her make-up before – without the illusory aid of lipstick her lips are barely there. She looks nice, though, like a woman on the bus; older but more dignified. In her arms Mr Bojangles yawns hugely, his fur matted and in need of a groom.
‘I phoned your flat this morning,’ Mama-san says. ‘When no one answered, I expected you’d be on your way here.’
‘Is Yuji OK? Where is he? Is he here?’
Mama-san laughs softly. ‘Look at you! You look as though you’ve been chased by the devil himself . . . Yuji is not here. But he’s in a safe place, don’t worry. I will take you to him later.’
Each word is a tiny tranquillizer dart of relief. I shudder with a pent-up sob.
‘I went to his flat this morning and there was a man there with a gun. He said he was waiting for Yuji . . . He said . . .’ The rest of what I say is unintelligible. I feel stupid crying like this in front of Mama-san, but it is beyond my control. The tears are coming out faster than I can wipe them away.
‘I know,’ Mama-san says. ‘I am sorry. There was no way I could warn you.’ Her hand descends onto my shoulder and I look up in surprise. Blinkered by tears I cannot read the expression on her face. ‘There’s no need to cry,’ she says. ‘The worst is over now.’ She rubs my shoulder-blade to comfort me.
I tell myself to get a grip. I tell myself that Mama-san wouldn’t be acting like the high priestess of calm if her son wasn’t safe. I take a deep, shaky breath. ‘Yuji is in a lot of trouble, isn’t he?’
‘Yes. A lot,’ Mama-san says. ‘But you have nothing to worry about. I will see that everything is taken care of.’
I wipe away the last of my tears. The skin around my eyes is raw and inflamed. In all my time in Japan I have not once let go like that. I had forgotten how good it can feel.
Mr Bojangles closes his eyes as Mama-san’s ruby nails scratch the fur behind his ears. ‘Come and drink tea with us,’ she says.
I step into the nocturne of the bar. The tables bask in sallow lamp glow, and the silver mirror-ball revolves, sifting moonbeams over the dance floor. Beyond the reach of sunlight, this place is a timeless vacuum. Only the quietude and Mama-san’s clear want of glamour hint at the time of day. I notice a woman sitting at the bar top and realize, with a murmur of shame, that she has been watching me all this time. Beside her a cherubic toddler sleeps in a pushchair. The woman is well dressed and very pretty, her silky black hair framing a face that seems to effloresce through the gloom. On the bar top sit three earthenware cups and a teapot with steam rising from the spout.
‘Introductions,’ Mama-san says: ‘Aya, Mary. Mary, Aya.’
‘Aya used to work here,’ Mama-san says. ‘But I had to fire her. She is the worst hostess I have ever employed.’
‘I hated every minute of it,’ Aya says. ‘Salarymen and their bad breath. Yuck.’ She pulls a face and we smile at each other. The child sleeps on. This is the first time I have seen Mama-san socializing without any evidence of financial lubrication. I take a sip of green tea, which tastes like dishwater laced with arsenic. Mama-san kneels by the pushchair and strokes the brow of the sleeping toddler, brushing aside a tiny kiss curl. Aya dips her hand into her handbag – the same leather Gucci number a client gave me once – and pulls out a vial of pills.
‘Valium?’ she says.
‘Er, no. I’m OK now, thanks,’ I say.
She shrugs and puts them back. ‘They are very mild,’ she says. ‘They came in handy when I worked here. Now I only need them in emergencies.’
Her child murmurs in its sleep. Aya tilts her head and regards my blotchy face with unconcealed pity. ‘No, I don’t miss being a hostess one bit,’ she says.
Mama-san and Mr Bojangles lead me through a door I have been curious about for a long time. I follow them up a stairwell, holding onto the banister rail, unsure of my footing in the dark. At the top of the stairs Mama-san extracts a key. I hear it twist in the lock, then the dirge of warped wood. I pursue her dark silhouette into the widening shaft of light.
Her living quarters are traditional, minimal Japanese – not what I expected from her at all. Her flamboyant dress sense promised fun and high camp: florid pink décor and dreamy black-and-white photographs of Mama-san in her hostessing heyday. Instead there is tatami, floor cushions, and a tasteful dragon wall scroll. Incense and furniture polish scent the air of what could easily pass for the home of a suburban housewife. As with the bar downstairs, there is not a window in sight.
Mama-san registers my confusion with an arched eyebrow. ‘Do your surroundings disagree with you?’ she asks drily.
‘No, not at all . . . I wanted to ask downstairs, what happened to Yuji last night? We were in this bar, and I went to the toilet, and when I came out again he had—’
‘Patience,’ Mama-san says. ‘I told you I would take you to him later. It is better that he explains to you himself.’
She sets Mr Bojangles down and opens a sliding-wall compartment. She pulls out a plain cotton bathrobe and hands it to me. It has been laundered and starched stiff as cardboard.
‘There is bath water ready,’ Mama-san says. ‘I had intended to take a bath, but you go ahead of me . . .’ She looks me up and down. ‘You need it more than I do.’ Gently she touches my arm, a shadow of the bitchy tyrant I have known all these months. ‘I must go back down and say goodbye to Aya. The poor girl hasn’t a clue what is going on. Today was a bad day for her to visit.’
In the bathroom a single bulb glows through the steam. As I enter, a spider scuttles a few inches across the ceiling, then freezes, as if playing an imaginary game of statues. I lift the bamboo covering from the metal tub and skim my fingers through the water. Hot enough to poach an egg. I strip off my clothes and throw them in a dirty heap on the floor. I remember to shower first, as is requisite here. I sit on the plastic stool beneath the waist-high shower, soap and scrub myself, then lather my hair with Mama-san’s apricot shampoo. I watch with satisfaction as dirt and nicotine spiral down the plug hole. When I have rinsed away every last trace of soap, I lower myself into the bath, my flesh protesting, inch by inch, as it is introduced to the scalding heat. Mariko used to be appalled by my Western bathing habits at the flat. ‘How can you wallow in your own dirty water?’ she used to ask. I told her that I prefer my own dirt to other people’s. Over here entire families share the same bath water, reheating it day after day, for weeks on end. And no matter how thoroughly you wash beforehand, fragments of yourself are bound to work themselves loose in the water. In illustration of this point I can see two short black hairs, buoyed by surface tension, that definitely do not belong to me. Not very pleasant, but I let it go in the name of cultural relativism.
In the water my hair swishes like seaweed and heat blasts the ache from my limbs. I stretch my legs, placing my feet on the metal rim of the bath. I notice two mystery bruises, one on my ankle and one on my collar-bone, and try to remember how they got there. I shut my eyes and slide down, submerging my head. There is an underwater rush in my ears as everything changes to a subterranean pitch. Why won’t Mama-san tell me what happened with Yuji? What difference would it make? I hope I am taken to him soon. I lift my head from the water. Rubbing my eyes, I hear the bathroom door sliding open.
Mama-san enters in a breeze of red silk. I straighten up in alarm, drawing my knees up, sloshing water over the side of the tub as I fold my arms over my breasts.
At my embarrassment, Mama-san gives a soft, unapologetic laugh. ‘So modest!’ she exclaims, sliding the door shut behind her. ‘I am sure you have nothing I haven’t seen a thousand times before . . . Or have you . . .?’
She sits down on the plastic shower stool, though the seat is wet and sudsy and will soak through her robe. Her hem trails on the floor, and the silk darkens as it drinks from a puddle at her feet. Mama-san smiles through the bath-water haze. The smile tells me she finds me comical and prudish. I want to tell her to get out – not because I am ashamed of my body: I just like to have some say in who gets to look at it.
‘You Westerners are so shy,’ Mama-san says. ‘We Japanese spend a lot of time at hot springs, bathing in the company of strangers.’
I fail to return her smile. I don’t care how many strangers she’s bathed in the company of. Maybe this is some kind of weird maternal voyeurism; maybe she wants to see what her son has seen. I stretch out again, trying to shed my self-consciousness.
‘Feel better now?’ she asks.
‘I feel cleaner now.’
‘Well, that’s something,’ Mama-san says. ‘You have shadows under your eyes. You look as though you haven’t slept.’
‘I haven’t really. But I’m not tired, though.’
‘You are shaken-up. An encounter with Hiro will do that to anyone.’
‘Hiro? You mean the guy with the burnt face?’ My stomach flips at the memory, even though he and his loaded gun are miles away.
Mama-san is in no hurry to answer my question. She rises from the shower stool and turns to the tiled ledge, wet silk clinging to her ample backside. She selects a jar of cream and sits down again. She unscrews the lid and begins to smear cream on her neck, in lavish upward strokes.
‘He was Yuji’s childhood friend,’ she says. ‘His mother was an alcoholic and didn’t look after him very well, so he stayed with us a lot. He has bathed in that tub, where you are now, a hundred times or more. He and Yuji were like brothers.’
‘Brothers? He hates Yuji! He said that Yuji got him sent away from Osaka, and that he deserves to have acid thrown in his face.’
Mama-san stops smoothing cream on her neck and puts down the jar. Misted by the vapours that hang between us, her face reminds me of a pale moon. She sighs a protracted sigh, as if watching children squabble in the playground.
‘Is it true that he stole drugs from Yamagawa-san?’ I ask.
‘So they tell me,’ Mama-san says. ‘I have offered to pay Yamagawa-san back, but he is being awkward. Fortunately, I am influential enough to help Yuji out of this . . .’ Mama-san squares her shoulders as she says the word ‘influential’. She notices me noticing this and laughs. ‘I bet you are thinking, How can this old hag be influential?’
‘Not at all,’ I say, impressed by her mind-reading powers.
‘How do you think this hostess bar has managed to stay open for so many years, despite the fact there is not a single valid work visa on the premises?’
I
n all the time I have worked here I had never given this much thought.
Mama-san smiles briefly. ‘My son is no longer safe in Osaka. This breaks my heart because Osaka is our home. But even after things are cleared up with Yamagawa-san, Yuji cannot stay here – not as long as there are idiots like Hiro who want to throw acid in his face. He told me about your plans to go abroad, and I think this is a very good idea. I can help you leave for Seoul tonight . . . if you are still willing, of course.’
My heart leaps. I am very willing. ‘Yes, I am.’
Mama-san nods. ‘I thought so.’
From the folds of her red silk dressing gown she takes out a slim packet of cigarettes. She reaches behind her and pulls forward a metal ashtray on a table-high stand. Then she lights a thin, brown cigarette and holds it out to me. I accept with damp fingers. It is a gourmet cigarette, rich and slow-burning, tasting of cloves and bank rolls. I spot an extractor fan above the bathroom cabinet and wonder why Mama-san does not turn it on. All the steam makes it seem as though we are in the middle of a cloud, a ceramic-tiled heaven. Together we funnel blue smoke through the haze. There is an air of ceremony between us, an intimacy in the ashes tapped into the damp ashtray. I decide that Mama-san isn’t so bad after all. It took the whole duration of my time in Japan for us to reach this truce, but better late than never.
Maybe Mama-san is thinking the same thing because she says: ‘How long have you been in Japan now, Mary?’
