“Oh.” Teresa was lost for words. Her face suddenly clouded over in tears.
When I apologized, she told me that she had thought Maki didn’t talk with anybody anymore, and so she was just happy to hear that she still could, and that she had spoken in Spanish, even to me. When she thought about how Maki must be feeling right now … Teresa broke into tears.
It turned out Maki had done a homestay at Teresa’s house. She loved the village intensely, and the villagers liked her too, fondly calling her La Pintorita—the Painter—because she taught art. When she’d been there about a year and a half, a thief broke into Teresa’s house when everyone was out. He seemed to know just what he was after, because he went straight for Maki’s money, taking nothing else. Since Maki had kept her funds together in one place, this meant that she was completely broke, but what disturbed her much more was the disappearance that night of Libertad’s husband Jaime. Jaime, a mestizo, was one of Maki’s pupils, and it was through him that she’d made friends with Libertad. A few days later, Jaime’s charred corpse was discovered. Although Teresa’s household had told Maki that she was family now and welcome to stay with them, Maki disappeared for a while. The villagers searched everywhere, and finally found her hiding out at Libertad’s house. After that, Maki never spoke to any of them again.
“She often told us she only started to feel alive after coming here. But when she was betrayed, she felt like she couldn’t trust anyone, that’s why she left the village. When I think about how she must have felt speaking in Spanish to you … Anyway, it was probably good that you two were able to talk.”
The next day was Sunday and I went to church with Luisito’s family. In the afternoon I led a troop of kids up to the top of a nearby hill. We could see not only the whole village, but the road to Realidad and the Indio settlements on the way, even as far as Maki and Libertad’s house. The guerrillas were probably lying low in the forest still farther on. I wondered if I hung around like this whether I’d encounter them, or maybe the army. I wondered if settling down in this village was even a real possibility.
Three days later, I caught the bus back to Coatltenango. Luisito didn’t want to go to school that day. I kept picturing him whimpering, “Nice Tomo-iki, don’t go!” but Maki’s expressionless face soon crowded Luisito’s out. I expelled any sentimental thoughts. I wanted to talk back to Maki, to tell her, You think you’re facing up to harsh reality, but in fact you’re the one who’s locked yourself up inside your own illusions. As if I had any right to say anything to her at all.
On the journey back, I felt like my feet were dragging, so I stayed a night in Coatltenango and caught the bus to Ambigua the next day. There were frequent connections between Coatltenango and Ambigua—I treated myself and bought a ticket for the nonstop express. This time it was an old tour bus, instead of a hand-me-down school bus. It had tinted windows but the air conditioner was broken, so inside it was still hot and humid. The bus was still fairly empty, so I took over an entire two-person seat and lay down.
Would Jody still be in Ambigua? If he was, I wondered if I’d I admit to him that he was right, that I had just been searching for a way to feel better about myself. That I had finally realized that if I wanted to become a guerrilla, I should do it in Japan … Anyway, I thought I would study a bit more Spanish in Ambigua.
About twenty minutes before we were supposed to arrive, the bus stopped. I sat up and looked out the window, but we were still on some nameless mountain road. I asked a rather bohemian-looking elderly gent across the aisle, “What’s happening?” and he answered in perfect English, “It’s a military check. Get your passport ready.”
That made me a bit nervous. I pulled out my passport. A soldier soon appeared at the door and barked some kind of instruction. Uneasy, I looked over at the gentleman. He nodded silently. Everyone stood up and filed off the bus one by one, empty-handed.
They lined us up next to the bus and two soldiers started checking IDs, from either end of the line. I was near the left end so my turn came around quickly. The soldier, who looked like he was in his thirties, flipped through my passport and said, “¿Chino, verdad?”—Chinese, right? Just look, it says right there, I thought to myself, but I gave a polite smile and answered, “No, Japonés.”
The soldier peered into my face, then at my passport again. His military cut, protruding cheekbones, and dark complexion made him look like a samurai warrior from another time.
“Entonces, es Chino”—Well then, you are a Chino.
Come on, I thought, and told him again, “No soy Chino, soy Japonés,” enunciating each word. The soldier handed back my passport, and muttered once more, “Chino.”
Shaking with anger, I clenched my fist and spoke in Japanese. “You fucking dogshit soldier.” You want me to call you Chino to your ugly samurai face?
The elder gent must have seen how angry I was, because he whispered to me, “Don’t get angry, boy. Chino just means Asian.”
“Huh?” I asked, looking at his face. He nodded.
So all Asians were Chinos. So that’s what it was. Chino just meant “Oriental.” Why Chino? Because China’s so big? Because it has the largest population? No, probably because most immigrants came from China. Latin America was made up of all different races, and Asian immigrants probably usually meant Chinese.
I calmed down a bit. Though why should being thought of as an Oriental make me calm down? I got angry being mistaken for Chinese and wanted them to call me Japanese, yet I hated being seen as just another wad of yen. If I didn’t have a problem with being called Oriental, wasn’t that a contradiction?
Thinking about it that way made me confused, but I had a feeling I was on the right track. That was where I was different from Maki.
“Muchas gracias, entiendo bien”—Thank you very much, now I see—I said to the gent. I told him a bit about myself, and he gave me his business card. He lived in the capital; I was welcome to come and visit sometime.
The line of people began to troop back to the bus. With permission from the soldiers I went to take a leak on the side of the road, while the passengers behind me moved ahead onto the queue. Some of the soldiers and passengers, freed from the tension of the encounter, were pointing and laughing at the broad backside of a woman stepping up onto the bus. So when a dry explosion shook the air, we were taken totally by surprise and thought we would be killed. Rounds of gunfire resounded. I went flat to the ground without even doing up my fly. I heard the other passengers screaming as they scurried for the bus, but I just lay there imagining in detail the pain I would feel when a bullet pierced my back. How many seconds would the burning feeling last? When that was over, would I die in agony? I didn’t want it to hurt.
I swore at myself for being captivated by my stupid imaginings. Get real. Should I go on lying there? Should I escape back to the bus? Or should I make a run for it and get away from the road? Those were the important questions, the ones linked directly to survival. An Oriental who can’t survive without using yen for a shield isn’t a real Chino.
A different type of gun was now firing close by. The soldiers were returning fire. A pungent gunpowder smell drifted towards me. The sound of the army fire was more overpowering and it was getting farther away. The military seemed to be winning. I had space to breathe now; I raised my head a little, but I was on the other side of the bus and couldn’t see the fighting. Yet there really were guerrillas just over there.
The guerrillas. I wanted to talk with them, touch them, smell them. If I could just do that, I wouldn’t care if they misunderstood and shot me, killed me. I didn’t understand a thing: why the guerrillas existed, what I had to do with the guerrillas, how the world worked.
Thinking that made me feel like I was going to cry. And right about then I noticed that my thing—not zipped away properly—was getting hard. Staying flat to the ground, I slid a hand under and checked myself. I felt sorry for it, quivering as if I had just come. What a meaningless existence, heading places for no good reason! What an empty exi
stence! Maki and I were both dead ends. I doubted if she’d ever have children—she wouldn’t be able to stand hearing people always call them Chino.
“Levantese, Chino”—Get up, Chino—said a soldier standing behind me. It was the samurai from before. The sound of the guns had stopped, and people were getting onto the bus.
“¿Donde, guerrillas?”—Where are the guerrillas?—I asked, listening with my whole body for the answer. My longing was so sharp, I felt my skin would split and bleed if it was touched.
“Se fueron”—They left.
Something tore inside my chest. I did my fly, stood up, returned to the bus to grab my bag, then hurriedly got off. The soldier saw me and said something, but I ignored him and just kept walking along the road. He came up and grabbed my arm with machine-like strength and ordered me to return. I tried to resist, but he forced me back onto the bus. The doors shut and the army truck out in front led us away.
“Siéntese”—sit down—the driver told me. I was still standing on the steps of the bus. I didn’t respond. He said it again.
“Siéntese, Chino.”
I answered weakly, “I’m no Chino.”
We, the Children of Cats (2001)
“Masako?”
“Is that … is that you, Naru?”
“It’s me.”
“I don’t believe it. Didn’t we promise not to call each other? We’d been so good … ”
“Yeah, but you heard what happened here in Tokyo, right? Someone let off poison gas in the Hibiya Subway line! A lot of people died!”
“I know.”
“Well, I thought you might be worried. I went back and forth for a while, but I finally decided to give you a call. I’m alive, Masako. I’m able to talk to you just like always. I wasn’t on that subway. This is me talking, the real me.”
“You called just to tell me that? We only had a hundred and two days left to go! Why would I think you were taking the subway at rush hour anyway? I thought we said we’d only call each other if something had actually happened to one of us.”
“But if I actually had breathed poison gas, how could I call you?”
“Look, a while back there were some terrorist attacks here because of the presidential elections, and I thought maybe you’d be worried and considered giving you a call. But really, it was just me grasping at an excuse to call you. So I didn’t.”
“But if you had, Masako, I wouldn’t have looked down on you. I’d have been moved at your concern for my feelings.”
“In other words, that’s how you’d like me to be feeling right now about you, right?”
“Wow, I can’t win, can I? I call to tell you I’m okay and I get yelled at.”
“This is exactly why we agreed not to call each other! We wanted to see how long we could trust that the other was okay without constantly checking in. If we’re going to live together after I get back, we’ve got to make sure we don’t become codependent. If all you need to tell me is that everything’s fine, wouldn’t a letter suffice?”
“I get it, I apologize. Sorry I’m still alive.”
“Oh, for the—as if you’d have to worry about it if you had been killed. And as if you’d called me back when the Kobe earthquake happened, anyway.”
“That was in Kobe!”
“You go to Kobe sometimes! It kept me up a few nights, wondering if you were okay. You didn’t think I might wonder about you?”
“You know I hardly go anywhere that far away! And if I had, I’d have told you.”
“From here, Tokyo and Kobe seem like the same place. Everything that happens in Japan seems connected to you. I wanted to call you, but I didn’t and you didn’t call me either, and I felt like we ended up all the stronger for it. I mean, you’re not worried about me, are you? As dangerous as this country is?”
“I’ve never been to Peru, so it’s hard for me to visualize it. If I think about it as dangerous, I get so worried I want to take a plane and fly there right now. But I can’t do that, so I just pretend everything’s fine instead. I trust you.”
“Trust? Is that really what it is? Would you really fly here if something happened to me?”
“Of course I would.”
“Would you come even if all I said was that I was so lonely I couldn’t stand it anymore?”
“Of course I would! Are you sure nothing’s going on with you over there? Are you okay? No problems with your Peruvian friends?”
“Why are you asking me now? All I wanted was to hear you say something like this right off the bat.”
“Well, I thought we were doing all right on that front just with the letters … I’m sorry, I called you because I wanted to talk to you, it was all my idea. I should hang up.”
“You just don’t get it, do you? If all you’re going to do is hang up on me, don’t call in the first place!”
“Look, can we just stop pretending? The truth is, we both wanted to hear each other’s voice.”
“That’s not what I’m … well, fine. Maybe you have a point. You’ve sounded pretty excited since I first picked up. It’s only natural, poison gas and terrorism in Tokyo will rile you up. I mean, terrorism in Lima, it’s scary but it happens all the time, it’s not a surprise. Walk around a bit and you can see for yourself why someone would want to get some terror going. But in Tokyo, it’s pretty extraordinary. And extraordinary is fun. Especially for you boys.”
“I confess, I might be a little excited. I sat in front of the television all night, I couldn’t sleep at all.”
“Let me guess what you were thinking about that kept you up all night. You were imagining yourself in that subway car, right, the gas flooding in and you’re about to die? And then you imagined me, hearing about your death and getting sad, and things got all tragic and dramatic?”
“Well maybe. I thought about things like that, sure. But getting tragic and dramatic, that’s a girl fantasy. Whatever else I might be, I’m a boy, and as a boy, I should imagine boy things, like what if the poison gas had been dropped in that deep dark forest in the middle of Tokyo? What if someone put that gas in a crop-duster and sprayed it over the whole city? Not that that’s what I was actually thinking about, though. It was more like: almost everyone in the city is dead, and everywhere you look, in the streets and in the houses and in all the buildings, in the rivers where people jumped to try save themselves, there are all these dead bodies, so many all piled up everywhere, blood running from their mouths and eyes and noses, and one of them is me. I kept imagining it like that, and I got goosebumps, it was a weird feeling, almost nostalgic, like an itch somewhere deep inside, I couldn’t sleep. And I thought, this isn’t right. The most real thing in the world to me is Masako, and yet this crazy thing I’m imagining seems just as real, so real I can taste it. And so I needed to hear your voice, I needed to get my feet back on the ground or I didn’t know what would happen, and so I called you. Even though I knew you’d yell at me, call me selfish.”
“That’s really what you were thinking about, Naru?”
“I knew it, you’re upset … ”
“No, no, I mean, is that really how your thoughts went? So clearly, running on like that, right up until you called me?”
“Nothing gets past you, does it? No, it got clearer as I was talking to you just now, as I was putting it into words. But I wasn’t making it up on the spot to impress you, if that’s what you mean.”
“No, I know, I know. So, did it happen?”
“Did what happen?”
“Are your feet on the ground?”
“Oh! Yeah, they’re stuck right on there, couldn’t get ‘em up if I tried.”
“I see.”
“I’m glad I called, you know. Not just for me, for both of us.”
“Me too.”
“So when that hundred-and-second day comes, we’re seeing each other, right?”
“Absolutely.”
“And maybe living together?” “Absolutely.”
“Have I passed?”
“If you keep going like this, you will.”
“I’m not going to call again, you know.” “Thanks for calling.”
I remember putting down the receiver and hitting the stop button on the tape recorder. I’d recorded the conversation imagining us listening to it years later, thinking that after she got back and we’d been living together for a while, maybe we’d start to take each other for granted and we could play the tape, listen to this romantic conversation together; but once I’d really taped it, it was clear to me this would never happen. And indeed, even now that Masako really was here, sleeping quietly by my side every night, we’ve never listened to it. The moment I hit stop I regretted it, I didn’t know why, but I was convinced that nothing good would ever come of it, that it would only end up hurting me somewhere down the line, and I tried to forget I’d ever made it at all, even tried as much as possible to forget the conversation itself. But I couldn’t bring myself to actually destroy it, and so sometimes, like now, shaken awake by a tiny earthquake in the middle of the night and possessed by an odd mixture of disquiet and anticipation, half-exhilarated, unable to fall back asleep, I can’t stop myself from thinking back.
Exactly one hundred and two days after that call, the moment Masako appeared pushing a cartful of luggage through Narita, I believe my life up to that point reached its peak. I’d been imagining her emerging unadorned by any ethnic gewgaws from Peru, wearing just a simple ivory tank top and loose-fitting pants of vivid Mediterranean blue, her nails painted a softly shimmering gold, her lips touched with the lightest pink and her eyes shadowed pale green, that platinum bracelet of hers dangling from her right wrist, a cardboard-colored cloche perched on her head.
And as it turned out, except for her wearing tight-fitting navy blue jeans, my predictions all came true. I told her as much right away, it was the first thing out of my mouth; her face lit up when she heard. “I was thinking the exact same thing!” She’d known I’d show up in these beige linen pants and this open-necked shirt made of Prussian blue Indian cotton, the ring she sent from Peru with the outline of a cat cut out of it adorning my right ring finger. It was what I’d worn to see her off the year before, and she’d thought, I bet that’s what Naru’s going to be wearing when he meets me, as if I’d only been gone a few minutes. So she decided to change into what she’d been wearing then too, and went into the bathroom in the airplane just before it touched down, changing out of the winter clothes she’d been wearing when she left Lima.
We, the Children of Cats (Found in Translation) Page 6
