Tuvalu

by Andrew O'Connor

  Mami

  Niigata

  The cold air inside the gangplank caused me to teeter between the plane and Japan. I was done with the place and yet was allowing a girl—or the invention of a girl sculpted between transient meetings—to reclaim me. She was an illusion. Common sense told me Mami Kaketa was a bad bet. But it was beyond my control since I was in love. Being in love was the easiest way forward, perhaps the only way forward. It gave me a focus. And while it did not excuse past actions, did not excuse my treatment of Tilly or give me a true end to her, it provided an explanation. Mami was no fling. I had not abandoned Tilly for a quick screw. I had to believe that. Love, so long as it was love, was messy and beyond anyone’s control.

  And yet nothing is ever clean. Stepping from the plane I had the sense I was returning not to Mami but to Tilly. The charred remains of the farmhouse had not erased her quite as she had hoped. She lingered in my thoughts, danced around them. As had been my habit for weeks I thought of cockroaches, of the smell of insect spray, of freckled pale skin and red pubic hair, of a round woman waiting by an ambulance, of skinny stinking cats and smattered blood, of ghostly lace curtains, chopped wood, a huntsman spider, a knock on the door and light across long-burnt carpet. This was how Tilly spoke now. And unless I ignored her, unless I forged ahead, I feared she would speak forever.

  In the customs line a middle-aged woman behind me bumped me every time we took a step forward. She seemed to be using me as a marker, a yardstick to indicate the end of the queue. I scowled but she only stared back uncomprehendingly, her face taut, her make-up thick and hard. The man in front of me constantly pulled denim jeans up to his bellybutton, outlining two flat bum cheeks, and it was not difficult to envisage what sort of a bum his wife stared glumly at before bed. Without warning, he turned to face me.

  ‘This line is for Japanese,’ he said. His voice was loud and confident despite his heavily accented English. To reinforce his point he held up his Japanese passport and thrust it towards me. In the photo, as in person, he had the flat, unsettling face of a man struck with a shovel in early infancy.

  ‘You must go there,’ he said, gesturing towards a long, winding line full of foreigners.

  I was in the right line, being a temporary resident.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I answered simply, using Japanese. A few people chuckled at his meddling and he turned around, giving his jeans another hitch. We all took a step forward and the woman behind bumped into me. I fought off a panicky suspicion I had made a terrible mistake returning, and pictured Mami lying on her bed, the curve of her hip beneath her silk slip and her wide, beautiful mouth. A way forward.

  Phillip was gone. The apartment door was opened instead by a British girl with an upturned nose and a dumpy little body. A second Brit—a tall, gangly man with wiry hair— appeared behind her protectively. He yawned as if just woken.

  ‘Yes?’ they both asked.

  ‘Is Phillip here?’

  The man stuck his head forward, frowning. ‘Who?’

  ‘You mean the boy we had stay here?’ asked the woman.

  ‘Yeah.’

  At this the man, realising he was not needed, peeled back and ambled down the narrow hallway. The woman shook her head. ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘Where did he go?’

  The woman shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but he left a bag of things here for a friend. What’s your name?’

  ‘Noah Tuttle.’

  ‘That’s the one. You’d better come in and collect it then. We were thinking about throwing it out.’

  Somewhere in the main room a child started to howl. I hurriedly collected my things, which Phillip had piled into a garbage bag, and let myself out. Dragging it all to a Denny’s restaurant I rummaged through and found a scrawled note. All that was written was my name and an address for a town in Niigata prefecture, high up in the mountains. I realised Mami had extended her offer to Phillip as a matter of course.

  ‘Shit …’ I mumbled, throwing down the note, ‘she found us both a house.’

  At first Phillip would not believe it was me.

  ‘What’s your hair colour?’ he asked.

  ‘Reddish.’

  ‘Wrong,’ he corrected, opening the door.

  ‘Then why’d you open the door?’

  ‘Because anyone else would have said red.’

  ‘Why the paranoia?’

  ‘Tuttle,’ he said sleepily, pulling me inside and locking up, ‘you can’t be too careful these days.’

  After this greeting I was surprised to find the vast kitchen devoid of marijuana. Instead it looked like any other kitchen, complete with all the latest conveniences. A microwave with more buttons than a stereo, a dishwasher, a fridge with a built-in ice dispenser and a knife set to rival any my mother coveted. The living room, too, looked perfectly normal: new tatami matting, two leather couches, a digital flat-screen TV, a coffee table and a small but flash sound system with the speakers on stands.

  ‘All came with the place,’ Phillip said with a laugh. ‘We really got lucky with that Mami bird.’

  I resisted the urge to ask him just how lucky he got with Mami.

  ‘This place is a palace,’ he went on. ‘We each have a bedroom, only I’ll need to sleep in yours.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Mine’s occupied.’

  ‘By who?’

  ‘By what,’ he corrected.

  I rolled my eyes. ‘You’re not actually growing that shit, are you?’

  Phillip only smiled.

  I followed him into his room, the walls of which had been lined with black plastic. He had cut this from something—garbage bags, most likely—and taped it all up. At the far end of the room, built into the main wall, there was a fan, and at our end, in the door, a cat-flap-like device. Phillip quickly shut the door behind me and pointed up at six solid banks of fluorescent lighting.

  ‘Cool tubing,’ he said. ‘Perfect set-up. And the plants,’ he ran his hand over the rows of square-potted trees, ‘all come from clones. That’s how I got this up and running so fast.’

  ‘Clones?’

  ‘Yeah. Sections cut from trees. Stems. I left them in water until they grew little white roots, then transplanted them. I tell you, I’m good at this.’

  ‘Well I want nothing to do with it.’

  ‘You won’t have anything to do with it. I’ll run the whole thing. Your cut’ll be for keeping quiet.’ He patted me on the shoulder. ‘I can’t believe,’ he said, ‘that Mami offered to set us up. It’s perfect. When I first saw that fan up there in the corner I danced, Tuttle. Honestly danced.’

  ‘Yeah?’ I asked without the least enthusiasm.

  ‘Right now I’m making a deodoriser box for the exhaust fan so the neighbours don’t smell all this flowering.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  Phillip was genuinely excited. ‘It’s not easy. People think it’s easy but it’s not. The heat’s a nightmare. I’ve pretty much got it sitting at twenty-seven degrees in this growing room but it still rises and falls a bit. I’ve insulated it round the front windows and other spots where the cold was coming through. Then I just have the aircon running hot twenty-four hours. The fluorescent lighting helps, too, while the air moving through makes sure it doesn’t get too hot. I crank up the aircon a little at night when the lights go off.’

  ‘You turn off the lights? Don’t they need light to grow?’

  ‘It’s darkness twelve hours a day, just like outside.’

  ‘It’s damn hot in here, Phillip.’

  ‘I know. It takes a bit of getting used to. The best thing to do is step outside when it really gets to you. Wipes away any sweat.’

  ‘It’s zero degrees.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  I wandered to the far end of the room and back again, running one hand along enormous plastic pots.

  ‘Still getting those headaches?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah.’ Phillip shrugged. ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Seen a doctor?’
/>
  ‘No point here. They all do the same—give me those hopeless headache tablets that just clog me up.’

  I said nothing, but I knew at that moment I could not live with Phillip long. I had to move on. He was no doubt still smoking himself into a half-stupor to counter pain, and it seemed likely he would pay for it with prison time. Why he was still in Japan was beyond me. There were better countries for a drug habit. But then again, he had landed an apartment without set-up costs and could expect absurdly high returns for any grass he sold. While it was stupid, it was not entirely irrational.

  ‘You got brothers and sisters?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah. Two older brothers.’

  ‘What do they do?’

  ‘They run the farm. Why?’

  ‘Farmers?’ I asked, surprised.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And your parents?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I was wondering.’

  ‘Mum and Dad help my older brothers. It’s a sheep place.’

  ‘So they’re all living happily on the farm, huh?’ I laughed.

  ‘What?’ he asked, moving between the rows. The fluorescent lights hung from adjustable chains and, though a less than salubrious enterprise, I was impressed by Phillip’s ingenuity. Everything was well built and looked sturdy and planned. There were sketches piled up in one corner— possibly designs for the deodoriser.

  ‘What?’ he asked again.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I shouldn’t laugh because it’s not funny. But I just never picked you as being of farming stock. Now I understand how you made all this.’

  ‘No. I was never a farmer.’

  ‘Well you are now.’

  ‘Whatever. And don’t be bringing people over, Tuttle. This has to be kept a secret.’

  But Phillip, stoned or drunk or both, broke his own rule three nights later. He headed out after dinner while I watched TV. I waited up for him but finally slept fitfully, sweating like a roast duck until sometime just before sun-up when a girl put her ear to my mouth to check if I was breathing. I got a glimpse of her but pretended to be drowsy and then fast asleep. She had seemed young, possibly even a high school student, but she undressed and screwed Phillip in the kitchen, whimpering throughout. Later, when she finally left, Phillip hardly stirred.

  ‘You’re here,’ he said at midday, groggily.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You were here all night?’

  ‘Where else would I be?’

  ‘We didn’t wake you though, right?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘What happened to keeping secrets?’

  ‘A slip-up. She saw nothing.’

  I left him there with his absurd crop and hangover and went out for lunch. It was a nice enough town despite the frigid mountain air. It was walled in on all sides by forested hills too jagged to climb and yet with peaks that never seemed far away. Most of the apartments and houses were simple two-storey jobs, and the hulking department stores at either end of town were the main hubs. They welcomed and farewelled the steady traffic which ground through on a smoggy four-lane freeway, exhaust multicoloured in the midafternoon sun.

  I sat in a dim restaurant beside this freeway watching vans pass me by like little bread loaves. I felt like a tourist. I wondered what Tilly would have made of it all, then forced her from my thoughts. There was absolutely nothing I could do about Tilly now and I hated it, hated even to think of her. I tried to picture Mami. I remembered, of all things, the way she put her finger in my mouth, the way she led me home that night and her reflection in the bathroom mirror as she turned back to face it.

  The Emperor’s

  Bluegill

  I decided to pay a visit to Mami’s hotel. Although all reports had her as exiled somewhere in Hokkaido, the ease with which she had paid the deposit on and furnished our apartment nagged at me. If in exile, how had she been able to access the money? I had to know for myself if she was still in Tokyo.

  When I asked for Mami at the hotel’s front desk— I had been careful to dress well and use polite Japanese—a small, delicate woman with the first signs of greying hair led me to a couch, where she gestured towards a number of magazines. She said she would make a call. Stupidly, I presumed this call would be to Mami and so thought nothing of the man who appeared a moment later, smoothing down his suit.

  ‘Noah Tuttle?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’ I quickly stood.

  ‘I am Mr Kaketa.’

  Mr Kaketa offered his hand, which felt soft and moisturised against my own. He smelt all at once like fruits, plants and something almost chemical—no doubt the result of various shower and shaving products.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, sir,’ I said, staring blankly into Mr Kaketa’s face, which was pleasant even without a smile. Though a man well into his fifties, Mr Kaketa had a youthfulness about him. His skin shone and his eyes were those of a far younger man. They were alert, the whites unstained by red tentacles.

  ‘So, you’re a friend of my daughter’s?’ he said without much trace of a Japanese accent.

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘You want to see her?’

  ‘If possible.’

  ‘Sorry, no. She is no longer here. I’m not sure when she’ll be back.’

  ‘Where can I contact her?’

  ‘You can’t. She is what you might call … indisposed.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Mr Kaketa, ‘do you live in Tokyo?’

  ‘No, Niigata.’

  ‘Niigata? A long journey. I’m sorry to disappoint you now you’re here, but please, travel back safely.’

  He reached out and shook my hand before I could ask anything more. A beautiful woman was crossing the lobby nearby, her head up, her high heels echoing loudly, but she did not distract the staff from Mr Kaketa. They all watched him from the corners of their eyes with a mixture of reverence and fear. They seemed to work doubly hard now he was around, doing everything too quickly and half-running from one task to the next. When I let go of his hand, the woman who had seated me rushed over and led me towards the doors. I saw Mr Kaketa turn to walk to the elevators. He paused to answer a staff member’s question, head down, staring at the marble floor as if it were a flower bed.

  I decided not to take the bus back to Niigata right away, but to remain in Tokyo for a few hours. The trip down had not been cheap and, since I was now using the last of the money Mami had given me, I felt an urge to wring value from it.

  Outside, unsure what to do with myself, I walked towards the Imperial Palace. I had the beginnings of a headache, which I attributed to dehydration. There was nowhere to buy water, but since I had no desire to turn back I pressed my hand to my head and trudged on through the East Garden, out onto the bridge on which Mami first told me about her ‘feeling’. I envied the carp below, lazily thrashing along the same stone walls, churning up the same water without concern.

  Behind me two boys, backs to the bridge railing, stared gloomily down at matching sneakers while their grandparents, motionless, gazed into the water. I nodded hello, then returned to peering from my side of the bridge. I stared along the moat to the tall, sharply angled wall Mami claimed to have leapt from. Again I pictured her jumping. And this time I could see it. She was calm. She did not flail limbs or open her mouth. She did just as she said she had, and when she hit the surface there was not a splash or sound. She was swallowed up.

  I walked to the spot in question and, stepping across a low chain fence, crept to the edge to look over. Due to the angle of the stone wall the water seemed a long way off, a fifty–fifty target at best. I could never have made such a jump—not into unknown, murky waters.

  ‘I would not jump in if I were you,’ said a foreigner behind me. I spun and was amazed to discover the voice belonged to an elderly Japanese woman.

  ‘I wasn’t going to, actually.’

  The woman nodded and took a step towards me. Her thin white hair and crumpled skin both outli
ned her skull: dimples on top, eye sockets like deep, dark pits, and the jaw so sharp it could have belonged to a dog. She wore a grimy kimono that might once have been red, and blue Nike sneakers. In her veined, rutted hands she clutched a framed photograph of a young Japanese soldier. His expression was arrogant, hers amused. I had not heard this woman approach and momentarily entertained the notion she was a ghost. But others were staring too, young people power-walking or jogging, housewives being pulled along by their family pets.

  ‘I am Mrs Onoda,’ she said, carefully stepping over the chain fence. ‘How nice it will be to speak English with someone who understands me.’

  ‘Nice to meet you.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, too,’ she said, putting the photograph down against a tree. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Noah.’

  ‘Noah. A good name.’

  ‘Thank you. Onoda’s Japanese, right?’

  ‘It is.’ She followed my gaze down to the photograph. ‘My husband, Mr Onoda. He’s what I think you call a straggler.’

  ‘He’s still coming, is he?’ I looked about for an old man and Mrs Onoda laughed heartily. She pulled the base of her kimono taut around hairy, stockinged shins, then nudged her husband aside and eventually laid him flat on the grass. In all my years in Japan I had never seen anyone—of any age—sit on the ground without first putting down some sort of a protective cover, even just a page from a newspaper, but Mrs Onoda went ahead and knelt anyway without regard for grass, dirt or insects, giving me a friendly, toothless smile.

  ‘I am old but strong. I can touch my toes,’ she said. ‘He,’ and she again nodded towards her husband, ‘is three years younger. The straggler.’

  ‘Straggler?’

  ‘Never came back.’