Tuvalu

by Andrew O'Connor

  A few hours later, to make matters worse, I managed to get myself fired.

  It happened in Suzuki-sensei’s class. Suzuki-sensei was a smelly sycophant who liked to hitch his denim jeans up around his nipples and show off his understanding of Western culture. He always gave me conflicting instructions in a single laboured breath, delivering hesitant, shy, raspy little soliloquies, sentences glued together with ineloquent ands.

  The moment I arrived he went though the lesson plan with me.

  ‘And then you say “hello”, and then I will say “hello”, and the first thing for you to say is “hi”, and I say “hi”, yes, and we will start the lesson, and you can decide when and to start? Can you? Okay. And you should decide the greeting and do it for me now.’

  He turned to the class. ‘We are welcoming Mr Noah again today.’ He turned to me. ‘Mr Noah …’

  I stared at him blankly.

  ‘Please,’ he said, putting his palms together and pointing at me with the tips of both hands, his thin, gawky body circling around two gargantuan shoes.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘Please,’ he said again, ‘like we discussed.’

  ‘Hello everyone,’ I said.

  ‘Hi,’ corrected Suzuki-sensei with an irritating little laugh and nervous tilt of the head.

  Bored, the second graders wriggled like worms in heavy dirt.

  ‘Please say, “Now we go”,’ said Suzuki-sensei.

  ‘Now we’ll go.’

  ‘Now we go,’ he corrected softly, before darting to the back of the room to attend to something.

  I walked around class, down rows of battered wooden desks. ‘Now we go’ had set them working. No doubt it had all been organised before my arrival. I was like a mayor, called in at the last moment to cut the ribbon and left to smile and shake hands. Students wrote busily, erasing their words just as soon as they wrote them. Others slept or stared into unseen worlds.

  In no time—as always happened in Suzuki-sensei’s classes—a number of the less imaginative male students started poking their index fingers into my bum, shouting something unintelligible in Japanese. Most teachers who work in Japanese primary schools have battled with this game. I ignored it. But when one boy with bleached hair and a bony finger scored a perfect bullseye, holding up his hands like a sports star, I lost my cool. I spun, stuck out my foot and upturned his chair in a single, swift, calculated movement. He was meant to stand but he was a slow boy and far lighter than anticipated. The chair’s small backrest somehow ended up coming down on the back of his head, just above the neck.

  ‘Fuck,’ I said dropping onto my hands and knees and doing whatever I could to placate him. But the boy was bawling by this time, all his bravado gone. Suzuki-sensei hurried over, and it was clear to me from the look on his ill-aligned face that he had witnessed my attack.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry, I—’

  ‘Please, I will help him now, and you will help him now, and the nurse,’ said Suzuki-sensei.

  I did nothing to help, though. I was of no use. I stepped out of the classroom, shocked, into the barren white corridor. Through the open sliding door I could see the student slowly stand up, gazing around confusedly as if he had been mugged. I felt a new disgust for myself.

  Suzuki-sensei stepped out of the room a few minutes later and shut the sliding door behind him. He rubbed at his chin but said nothing at all. His eyes had always contained a certain contempt for me, but now they gleamed with something bordering on ferocity.

  ‘Come, Mr Noah,’ he at last said. ‘This … this is …’

  Suzuki-sensei led me to see the principal, a short, stocky man who had often been good to me. All the previous principals lined the walls with identical expressions in identical sized photos with identical portrait frames. A woman brought us green tea and the principal lit a cigarette. Suzuki-sensei did the same. The two men talked for five minutes in solemn Japanese. Occasionally the principal would nod and glance my way, but mostly he ignored me. He sat with one fat leg over the other on a large swivel chair. When Suzuki-sensei fell quiet the principal shook his head, clucked his tongue and picked up the phone to place a call to a Mr Yamamoto. That was all I understood —the name. When this finished, he again spoke to Suzuki-sensei, who turned to me dutifully.

  ‘The principal wants to say thank you.’

  ‘Thank you?’

  ‘Thank you,’ said the principal.

  ‘Thank you and no more,’ said Suzuki-sensei.

  ‘Thank you and no more what?’

  Suzuki-sensei frowned. ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No more … ever.’

  ‘No more what?’ I asked.

  The principal clarified something with Suzuki-sensei in Japanese and they both nodded, as if maybe between them they had worked out the cause of our communication difficulties.

  ‘No more work,’ Suzuki-sensei said. ‘Thank you.’

  Both the men pulled their suits taut like a final word on the matter. And feeling their decision to be perfectly fair, I did not argue. I stood slowly, unsure what to do.

  ‘Then I’m fired?’ I asked dumbly.

  They stared at me.

  ‘I’m sacked? No more? Bye-bye?’

  ‘No more, yes,’ said Suzuki-sensei, reverting back to his language-cassette English. ‘Thank you, and I’ll see you around.’

  Both men stood and bowed.

  I was escorted off the premises by the tea lady, who had, I think, heard the whole conversation and looked like she wanted to beat me to death with the broom that she held at a perfect right angle to her dumpy, middle-aged carcass. At the gate, however, she managed a half-hearted smile, obviously confident I would go quietly after all, and let down the broom.

  ‘Thank you for all of your hard work,’ she said in formal, ritualised Japanese. Without waiting for me to reply she hurried back inside, dusting off her hands as though she had just taken out an especially foul bag of rubbish.

  This was not the first time I had lost my temper and attacked a far weaker aggressor without thinking. There had been another incident, and in the days following my sacking it resurfaced from the ever-shifting murk of my memory, seemed almost to bob beside me like a buoy, one I had weighed down to keep from looking at and which, having freed itself, now shot to the surface. I was thrust back to my final year of school, surrounded by boys who were well-off and whose looks advertised it; boys whose respect I had craved since joining the homeroom in Year 7. I could smell their designer deodorants and hear their talk behind me as though still in that homeroom. I could hear Mr Baldini reading the daily notices with his faint Italian accent, occasionally dropping in lacklustre jokes which aroused little or no response.

  On this particular morning it was raining and I was worried about my hair—I had dyed it black and straightened it with my mother’s hairdryer, convinced my usual russet curls were the cause of my unpopularity.

  Finally one of the boys behind me noticed.

  ‘Tuttle’s fucked with his hair,’ he said to the room at large. ‘Dyed it. And you know what?’ he added, effortlessly adopting a lisp, ‘I think he’s straightened it.’

  ‘Fuck, he has,’ said another with genuine unease.

  I turned to find them reclining in their plastic chairs, hands propping up pretty heads. One or two held a faint smile—more condescending than warm. I wanted to stand and leave. The whole room was looking at me. A chuckle spread.

  Perhaps noticing this, a bored boy from the group behind me stood and whispered in Wang’s ear. Wang?! Fucking Wang was a twit—the class parrot.

  Wang peered up at the boy, puzzled. The boy repeated himself. Mr Baldini put down the notices and eyed the room over his glasses, aware something was up. Wang let out a nervous laugh, put one finger in his mouth, then another, then looked at me. He stood.

  The room hushed. I felt a sudden and fierce hatred for them all. Wang unceremoniously scratched his flat, trousered bottom. All eyes were on him and
, self-conscious, he rubbed an ear against his shoulder. I kept my head down.

  ‘Wanna, wanna,’ he stammered. Everyone fell silent. ‘Wanna go on a date, beautiful?’

  The room exploded into laugher and no one heard the sound of my chair being thrown back as I leapt to my feet and punched Wang hard in the face. Being slight he sailed backwards and collapsed in a heap between the rows of desks. The clatter of this furniture was implausibly loud. I stood, poised to strike again.

  No one moved, not until Mr Baldini stormed towards me, grabbed my arm and dragged me outside into the rain.

  His eyes bulged white. ‘That was the cruellest thing I’ve seen any one human do to another. You’re pathetic. From day one in this class all you’ve worried about is what those stupid boys think, and you’ve never had the guts to be kind to a soul. As long as you’re this scared of being unpopular, you’re better off where there aren’t people. Now get out of my sight and explain all this to the principal while I check you didn’t kill that poor boy. I hope you’re expelled on the spot.’

  A few months later, having endured a suspension negotiated by my father and finished my exams, I took Mr Baldini’s advice and moved to Japan. I had thought a lot about his choice of words and decided the number of people around me was not nearly as important as being alone—alone and defenceless.

  The summer was torturous. I cannot recall any one thing about it that was pleasant. Despite resolving to move out of Nakamura’s and separate myself from everyone I knew, I no longer possessed the strength. It seemed with age I was becoming increasingly weak. Perhaps there was merit in all my father had said. Perhaps I was a loafer, a dropout. I liked to believe I was holding out, waiting for something without knowing what. I liked to believe I was finally testing myself. But now I was unsure. What had changed since that rainy school day? I kept thinking of the look in Suzuki-sensei’s eyes when he joined me in the corridor, of the tea lady with her broom, of my father. Tilly, watching wordlessly, alternately despised and worried about me.

  I mulishly refused to enjoy the steaming hot days, the meals I ate or the sudden abundance of free time I found myself with. It took Phillip weeks to get me to accompany him to Shinjuku. When I finally did—wondering all the while as to the contents of his hiking pack—he led me into Kinokuniya, a bookstore with a floor for foreign books. Gaijin of all colours, shapes and sizes drifted silently between the densely packed rows.

  ‘Do you think she’s gone and kicked it?’ he asked, examining a 700-page guide to better sex.

  ‘What?’ I asked vaguely.

  ‘You’re thinking about it again, aren’t you?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘All of it,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t sleep, can’t concentrate. It’s all just—’ ‘You wanker. Snap out of it, Tuttle. You’re becoming a real fucking bore. All I’ve heard for ages is what a shit you are. How awful the world is, that it could spawn and weave something so wretched as you. It’s all said and done. You can’t change it. Tilly’s fine, the kid you hit is fine, and you’re free to fuck Mami, which is what you wanted in the first place, isn’t it? No harm, no foul. Things have a way of working themselves out.’

  Phillip leant in and lowered his voice. ‘What are we all here for in the end? To have fun, right? To eat, drink, screw and experiment. So live a little.’ He tapped a tangled position sketched inside the book. ‘Like this guy. This guy’s got the right idea.’

  ‘Who kicked it?’ I asked, ignoring the picture.

  ‘Nakamura-san.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Her apartment.’

  ‘What about it?’

  Phillip rolled his eyes and held an ancient Chinese position up to the light for a better look.

  ‘You’ve only been staring at that apartment since you were sacked. You haven’t noticed anything odd?’ he asked. ‘Like the fact it’s empty?’

  ‘It is?’

  ‘She’s gone. All that’s left are two plastic slippers on the balcony. That’s it. You look through the windows when the sun’s right and it’s empty inside. There’s not a plate, cup, chair or anything.’

  ‘She’s probably moved.’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sure she has.’

  ‘I’ve got a funny feeling about it, Tuttle. You get to her age, you get that fixated on beating the shit out of your bedding every day, and you’re waiting to shuffle on upstairs. You’re not thinking about buying a brand-new apartment in Asagaya.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘She’s dead,’ he said flatly.

  ‘Maybe.’

  For a moment I wondered about my rent and, as a follow on, if there was a room in the hostel I could move into without anyone being the wiser. Then Phillip’s backpack nudged me as he returned the sex book to the shelf, in turn knocking me into a girl of perhaps six who hugged a small handbag and peered up with a look of distrust.

  ‘What’s with this backpack, Phillip?’ I asked.

  ‘For me to know and you to find out, Tuttle.’

  ‘So you keep saying.’

  ‘Come on.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Let’s get out of here. It’s time.’

  Phillip led me from the store into a muggy, late summer dusk. The heat showed no sign of letting up or of being swept from the city by a sea breeze. The buildings acted as walls and locked the air into a sweltering steel box, sealing it with airconditioning exhaust.

  ‘God I hate this city,’ I said to myself. People bumped me, bouncing me off walls like a pinball. I almost tripped on a stack of porn magazines and their owner, a toothless bum, grinned. He gestured for me to buy one with a brown, sun-weathered hand. I shook my head.

  Phillip—letting the backpack slip from one shoulder— led me onto a large, semi-enclosed pedestrian bridge near Shinjuku Station. From here we could peer down one of Shinjuku’s widest and busiest thoroughfares. At its distant end, at right angles, were three skyscrapers, each a little lower than the last, their tops forming steps. As the sun set, metal and glass everywhere had taken on an almost blue hue. There was, however, still enough natural light to mute the narrow backlit advertisements which—in garish pinks, reds, blues and greens—ran up the sides of every building, detailing the companies within. Delivery trucks and cars idled beneath us, waiting for a change of lights. And every footpath swarmed with people, many of them silhouettes in the half-light.

  I stared at customers queuing for a meal outside First Kitchen while Phillip gently set down his pack and pulled out a box held together with sticky tape. I watched him tear at the tape and toss it aside, flapping it off his fingertips.

  ‘What’s in there?’ I asked.

  ‘A biplane.’

  He pulled away the last of the cardboard and packed inside were indeed the components of a biplane. He worked quickly, snapping the sections together until he was holding in one hand a canary-yellow plane with a red plastic propeller and two tiny metal machine guns. Kicking the backpack aside he began to wind the propeller up. People crossing the bridge either hurried on or stopped to watch.

  ‘You can’t be serious,’ I said.

  ‘Look at the street, Tuttle. It’s the widest street on earth. It must be a hundred metres across. And it just goes on and on.’

  ‘But the engine—’

  ‘There isn’t one. The propeller’s on a rubber band.’

  ‘Still …’

  After winding it up Phillip released the propeller and flung the plane from the bridge. For a moment it was beautiful, this one small balsa craft flying silently over so much clutter and chaos, so much metal. There was something immensely graceful about it. The setting sun glinted over its taut, painted wings. Phillip watched it closely and made no attempt to run.

  ‘What about these people?’ I asked, not taking my eyes off the biplane, which held straight and level. ‘They saw you build it—throw it.’

  ‘Worry, worry, worry,’ Phillip said. ‘They’re Japanese. They’re not going to do anything.
’

  And he was right. Around us, as if they had come simply to see the plane, people took up positions and watched it fly. Likewise pedestrians down below began to notice it, mouths ajar. Although tiny, the yellow biplane was so alone in the vast space above the road and between the endless walls of buildings it seemed to catch people’s eye. It continued to fly in a straight line, over crowded intersections and upturned heads. More and more people saw it and nudged those beside them.

  Slowly at first and then with increasing speed the plane began to lose altitude, finally dipping sharply. A few people moved towards it and Phillip laughed. A second later the thing exploded—a sharp, far-off pop and puff of white smoke. Balsa rained dimly in the growing dark. I saw one man duck and then rise cautiously, and when I turned my head we were again the centre of attention.

  ‘C’mon,’ Phillip said. ‘We could have the eyes of the whole city on us in a moment.’

  But I only smiled. For some reason I was suddenly relaxed. I saw the biplane had already been forgotten by most.

  ‘Walk this way,’ Phillip hissed. ‘Act normal.’

  No one chased us. Laughing, we toasted the historic flight with pints of Guinness in an Irish bar, toasted it as if we were aviators, two pioneers. But later the drink turned on us and we sat arguing about the details—distance, height, the volume of the explosion—until we tired of each other’s company and went our separate ways.

  I burped quietly without meaning to and smelt the sushi I had eaten for lunch.

  Nakamura-san had indeed vanished.