by Kat Cameron
I think of my own parents. I haven’t seen them in three years, since I told them about my relationship with Jeff.
“My fiancé was African-American,” I say. “My parents wouldn’t accept him. They didn’t even come to his funeral. I haven’t forgiven them.”
Lafcadio nods slowly. “My first wife was mulatto. When our marriage was discovered, I lost my job at the Cincinnati paper. I tried living in New Orleans, the West Indies. Then, when I came to Japan, I finally belonged. I married Setsu, the daughter of an impoverished samurai, took her last name and became Koizumi Yakumo.”
He doesn’t mention what happened to his first wife. You can’t look back when you’re running away.
“You are dreaming your life, Elaine-san,” he says meditatively. “All beings are only dreaming in this fleeting world of unhappiness. I wrote those words nearly one hundred years ago. I wrote many books, travelled to many places, loved many women. Now it seems as if it happened to someone else, to a character I created.” He falls silent and then disappears, fading into the kitchen walls.
I can’t look back. If I had a thousand origami cranes, I would wish for my old life, but now it’s just a dream I once had.
3. Tasogare
Lafcadio materializes in the kitchen as I’m washing the dishes. I haven’t seen him for a few weeks; I’ve been so busy at school. He’s looking a little tatty around the edges, his black kimono even more worn, his hands fraying into grey shadows.
“Lafcadio. Komban-wa.” I show off a bit, hoping he’ll realize that I’m trying to adapt. “O-sashiburi desu ne.” It’s a long time since we’ve seen each other — it does have a certain ring in Japanese. He thinks I don’t appreciate Japanese culture. “Where have you been?” I’ve missed him.
He traces a figure in the air, implying regions beyond my knowledge. Evasive, as usual.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Washing the dishes.”
“Where are the servants?”
I wave a soapy hand around. “Do you see any servants?” Honestly, he has less idea of the work that goes into keeping house than any man I’ve met. Didn’t he ever watch his wife do any housework?
“Why aren’t you at school?” is his next question.
“It’s Christmas vacation.”
“Christmas!” Lafcadio exclaims. His face fades in and out of focus, the bones projecting forward like the Cheshire cat as it vanishes down to its smile. “What has Christmas to do with the Japanese?”
Good question. Fake candy cane decorations on the main streets and a few Santa Clauses scattered here and there are the only signs of the season. It would be better if there was nothing. No religious sentiment, no goodwill, no anticipation. The only thing the same is the shopping. I sent a calligraphy scroll to my parents. A peace offering. I haven’t phoned them since I arrived.
“It is your first Christmas alone. You should get out of the apartment,” Laffy says. “Not stay at home brooding.”
Does he read my mind or just my body language? It shocks me, how accurately he hits my sore spots. I want to yell, “Get out, get out of my apartment. You’re dead, why are you lingering here, what the hell do you want?” But I don’t. I want to know why he is here and Jeff isn’t. If he leaves, I will be alone.
“Shall I tell you a story about mourning?” Laffy asks.
“Sure, as long as it doesn’t interfere with my washing.”
He settles himself in seiza in the corner of my kitchen, between the microwave stand and the fridge. Kneeling, he looks like a pile of old clothes in a heap. “This was published in my book In Ghostly Japan. Have you read it?”
“No.” I tried to find his books on the sixth floor of the Kinokuniya bookstore, when I went down to Tokyo, but the selection ran more to kanji workbooks and Tom Clancy novels.
“This is a story from that collection. I discuss many of the different types of ghosts. In this story, the ghost arises from the smoke of a stick of burning incense, which carries with it a faint but never-to-be-forgotten scent, redolent of the back alleys and temples of Japan. There are many kinds of incense with diverse and beautiful names: Tasogare, which is Evening-Dusk or Gloaming in the poetic language, and Wakakusa, Plum-Flower, are two of my favourites. I have participated in incense parties, called ko-kwai, where guests gather to identity the different types of scents burned.”
Lafcadio has a tendency to go off on tangents. Maybe that type of thinking endeared him in the circuitous ways of the east. I interrupt by asking if he has an actual story to tell.
“So impatient,” he sighs. “This is a very old tale, from the Chinese, as are many Japanese classics, concerning the Chinese Emperor Wu. He lost his favorite concubine, the Lady Li, and great was his sorrow. One day, he determined to recall her spirit and, despite the anxieties of his counsellors, performed the rite of spirit recall. He lit the incense burner and meditated on the image of his beloved. In the wavering grey smoke, he perceived her form. Great was his joy as he looked again upon her beauty. But this was not enough for him. He reached out to touch her and, in an instant, the apparition vanished.”
“What was the moral of that tale?” There is always a moral for Lafcadio. His mind is steeped in nineteenth-century British values, despite his attempts to escape, first to America and then to Japan. He reminds me of my British grandmother, with her fussy war-bride ways and endless nostalgia.
“Stories waver in the mind but when we attempt to hold them, they slip from our grasp,” he admonishes.
“Ah so, little Grasshopper,” I mock, but the cultural reference is lost, and he frowns in confusion. Obviously, Laffy hasn’t spent his time in the afterlife watching TV. Just my luck to have a pedantic ghost in my kitchen.
“Any other stories,” I ask, hoping to placate him, but he wavers and fades, just like the Lady Li. I’ve offended him.
“Come back,” I call. “I was just kidding.” No response. He comes and goes at will. “You can tell me some more stories. I’ll listen more closely this time.” He doesn’t respond and the corner by the fridge remains empty. The refrigerator hums, the only sound.
“Okay, I’m out of here.” I throw down the dish towel and bundle up in my winter coat, which is several years out of date and uncomfortably tight, and a striped scarf and mittens bought here. I wasn’t expecting winter in Japan. Stupid of me. I yell, “I’m going to a movie in Mito,” in case he’s listening.
No snow, but it’s colder inside than outside. I should insulate my windows. Every time there’s a breeze, the faded curtains in the living room start swaying inwards, even though the windows are shut. The leaves of the English fern on my bookcase are brown at the edges.
At the train station, several of my students are waiting for the train. They’re stuck with coming in to their club practice, even though it’s Saturday and two days to Christmas. At least it was only for the morning.
“Hello, Miss Elaine.” Kyoko, a third-year student, smiles and waves, but stays in her group of plaid-clad girls. Below the kilted skirts, their cold bare knees glow red. I’ve asked Little Yasuko if the girls aren’t allowed to wear tights and she said they aren’t fashionable. Teenage girls, the same everywhere.
I smile and wave back. Most of them will go as far north as Mito with me, but they’ll keep their distance and so will I. It’s the only way to function in their society where everyone sees you and knows what you’re doing: keep your distance and be polite. It’s not too bad in the short term.
Looking out the window, I see the suburbs of Mito, the blocky apartment buildings and swooping tile roofs of single-family homes flashing by.
Two hours later, I stumble out of a movie into the grey twilight, feeling just as depressed as when Laffy chased me out. A faint curtain of sleet falls; the street is crowded with open umbrellas.
I drift back down the hill to the station, sleet soaking the edges of my loafers, and then stop outside the windows of the Daie department store, wondering if I should get some ramen here or eat
at home. Home. The word conjures up the apartment in San Francisco, a two-bedroom walk-up in a Victorian house. Wood floors. Cream ceilings with carved mouldings; a living room with a round stained-glass window of purple grapes and forest-green leaves; a gas fireplace: all of these compensated for a kitchen the size of a small closet and plumbing that shook the house every time we took a shower.
It hits me, the feeling of loss. I miss Jeff as intensely as in the first months, that blurred time last winter after he died. The ache pulls deep in my chest, like a settled cold that reaches down through the lungs. I start to shake, those recurring, uncontrollable deep shivers. Huddling in a corner of the recessed entrance to Daie, I grip myself with both arms, a tight wrestling hold to fight down emotion, widen my eyes so none of the tears falls. Well-dressed women and uniformed children come and go, staring at the gai-jin show. As if I care about loss of face. I’m a freak regardless.
I can’t go back to my apartment in this state. From March to June last year, I’d come home from school, drop off my books and assignments, then head out, to a movie, a coffee shop, a restaurant, a concert, anywhere, so I didn’t have to be in those echoing rooms with their nine-foot ceilings. Then Japan, the career change we’d planned together. His rejection letter arrived two weeks after the funeral, the same day as my acceptance. He had two years more teaching experience than me, but I can count the number of African-American teachers here on the fingers of one hand.
Across the street from the Daie is the store where I bought the calligraphy scroll. It should have incense. I pull myself back into organized fragments, walk a block down, climb the steps of the pedestrian crossway, and descend on the other side. A chime jingles as I enter.
Japanese dolls, gorgeously dressed and posed in the coffins of their glass boxes, line the left-hand wall. Huge rolls of red and gold kimono material are stacked to the ceiling at the back. A maze of chimes hangs in the small room, each cast-iron clanger weighted with a rectangle of paper bearing a kanji phrase for good fortune. Tiny statues of pigs roam everywhere, in white clay, glass, ceramic, dark wood, their red eyes staring at me, following me as I wind my way around the tables. On January 24, the year of the Pig begins.
I find the incense below the New Year’s postcards: pyramid cones in packages of six, long sticks in fragrant paper envelopes. Picking two envelopes at random, I smell musk and the spicy odour of sandalwood. It reminds me of Ashbury, the hippies who linger — forty years after the Flower Power age ended — in dark, dingy shops, selling incense, drug paraphernalia, and tie-dye clothing. In contrast, this place has the clean, affluent feeling of an upscale Hallmark gift store.
Walking back along the street, I notice two life-sized goblins perched above the entrance of an office building, their spindly black arms holding a red banner over the door. I’ve never seen them before. The city is shifting around me. The goblins leer, contorted grins and staring eyes, like the wicked faces that peer from the corners of medieval buildings
“Tadaima,” I call, opening the door to the apartment. The word echoes. Laffy is still absent. It’s so cold my breath hangs in the air.
Setting up the incense stand on my kotatsu, I light one stick. It takes me four tries to strike the match and the superstition against that number, shi, with its association with death rises in my mind. Nothing is without meaning here; even the simple act of lighting an incense stick becomes a ritual. I’m doing it all wrong. The incense blazes and I softly blow on it, reducing the tip to grey ash. A thin line of smoke wavers up towards the ceiling, divides in two, spiralling into loops, DNA strands. The smell takes me back to when I was a teenager, spending nights in my basement room, smoking pot and burning incense to hide the bitter-sweet smell. Wind blows through the curtains. I lean back, look at the smoke as it dances in the convex surface of the TV, like two hands of a maiko, sleeves held back and patterned fan waving, or the white and red ribbons that girls use in rhythmic gymnastics. I focus on the dancing strands.
Nothing happens at first. “November Rain” by Guns N’ Roses plays in my mind: Axel Rose’s screech of voice and the ridiculous bleeding red roses from the video. Sleet turns to rain outside my windows, the acrid smoke from the incense rises and swirls, and I smell candles burning. The church in San Diego, standing at the front with Jeff’s parents. The open coffin. I touch Jeff’s hand, feeling a cold absence. Then blank gaps of time. I remember singing “Amazing Grace” — his parents wanted hymns — and hearing his brother’s baritone. He sounded like Jeff, singing in the shower. A revenant.
My parents didn’t come to the funeral.
“We never met him, Elaine,” my mother explained over the phone. “And you know we worried about you.”
“Why the hell would you worry?” I whispered. Four of Jeff’s friends from graduate school were in the living room and I didn’t want them to hear me arguing.
“We just didn’t see a future for the two of you. But let’s not argue about it now. How are you feeling?”
“How am I feeling? My fiancé was killed in a hit and run two days ago.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. We’re concerned, Elaine.”
“If you were really concerned, you would come to the funeral.” I didn’t slam down the phone. I replaced it gently.
Jeff stares at me from the picture on the bookcase. “Let it go, Elaine,” I hear him say. His voice had deep timbres that made the hair on my neck rise. The first time we slept together, he tangled my hair in his hands and gently pulled my head back so he could kiss my throat. “You are so beautiful,” he whispered, and with him, I was beautiful, for the first time in my life.
I cut my hair when he died. There are no more mourning rituals in our culture, no need to wear black for a year, no going into seclusion. It would be easier if there were steps to follow, after the blurred week of the funeral, the friends dropping by with casseroles and halting expressions of sympathy. Jeff’s parents drove up when I phoned that night. They took charge, leaving nothing for me to do. I stayed with friends. But after the funeral, I was on my own. This expectation in Western society: Once the body is buried, you should move on. Get over it. That story is finished.
Sometimes I think I’ve imagined Jeff, there is so little left to hold. Some pictures. A few books. His T-shirt that I sleep in, printed with a black and white caricature of Einstein. His voice in my mind.
A glowing tip of the incense stick falls off into a pile of ash, scatters over the shiny surface of the kotatsu. Lafcadio appears, a grey wisp of smoke rising above the tatami. “The stories we tell, Elaine. They drift in the air like the lingering scent of evening dusk. They are all that remains.”
4. Baku
Kawabata-sensei slaps the nenkyu form for the English conference on my desk.
“It is in Tochigi. You must take the train,” Kawabata snaps. She’s annoyed with me because I made her fill her out the form. It’s in Japanese, but she thinks that’s no excuse.
I stamp it with my hanko, which looks like a thin tube of lipstick or a pinky finger. The hanko is the equivalent of a signature, stamped on everything from job applications to personal letters. Brides and grooms stamp their wedding certificate with a hanko.
“Remember, you must give a lecture on Sunday.” Kawabata-sensei, the consummate teacher. Always ready with advice, whether I need it or not.
“Hai, Kawabunga,” I whisper under my breath as she leaves.
“Miss Elaine-san,” says Sumo-sensei, who sits at the next desk. “Did you wish something?” His name isn’t really Sumo-sensei, but he watches sumo religiously and spent most of this month filling me in on the January tournament, one of four yearly tournaments. He is nearly retired and teaches only one or two classes a day.
“No, I was just talking to myself.”
He nods, worried that the resident English teacher is going off her rocker. Later, he brings me a cup of o-cha and says, “Kio tsukette, neh. You must not work too hard.” Since I’ve been doing the Daily Yomiuri crossword for the last hour, pu
tting in time until my next class, I’m not sure how to interpret this comment. But I smile and hope he means well.
“I don’t know what Kawabata’s problem is,” I complain to Jules that night at the Drunken Duck. Our Friday ritual, a drink and snacks at the Duck, then a pancake supper, okonomiyake, in a tiny restaurant two doors away. “She knows my Japanese is minimal.”
“She’s still pining for Sean.”
“Sean, the wonder boy.” I sip my sake. “Expert in all things Japanese.”
“Even if he wasn’t a wonder boy, she’d still prefer him. After all, he is male. Speaking of which,” and Jules lowers her voice and looks around, “have you heard the latest gossip about a certain American male from your program?”
I check the room too. Two tall gai-jin men with beards are playing darts on the other side of the tiny L-shaped space. They must be researchers — the language schools don’t allow teachers to have facial hair.
“Damn it, Jules, why do you always get the gossip before I do? What happened?”
“I heard that a teacher assaulted a junior high student in a 7-11.” Her gravelly Australian voice pulls out the numbers, so that it sounds like “sieven a livin” and I see some burly white male pulling a tiny student through a sieve.
“Shit, no.”
“Shit, yes. He was with a group of his friends, like-minded individuals you can be sure. He grabbed a girl’s breasts and pushed her down. His friends pulled him off.”
“Which one was it?” But I think I already know. He’s an older man from Louisiana, balding and red-faced, as much of an outcast as I am among the smooth-skinned, young college graduates. He’s the type who calls a woman “honey” while patting her ass.
“I don’t want to name names,” Jules says discreetly. “It’s just a rumour. I didn’t see it.”
“Who did you hear it from?” How far does the gai-jin hotline extend?
“I heard it in Japanese class on Saturday.”
There are hundreds of foreigners in Mito: some teach in language schools like GEOS and NOVA, as Jules does, and others work at the Hitachi research stations. A lot of people must know. I ponder my options. I could tell the local Coordinator for International Relations, our liaison with the Ministry of Education — Alain is an easy-going Frenchman in his late twenties, more mature than most of the people in the program. He’d know the proper procedures.
