While Lizzie’s imagination traveled through the pages of a medical dictionary, Lucy’s fervor was for the atlas. She kept the meager family map and atlas collection under her bed with a flashlight. She studied a country every night, its mountain ranges, rivers, and, most of all, its language. A school trip to the British Museum led to Lucy’s epiphany. She saw the Rosetta Stone for the first time, and realized the weak point of her education. The Roman alphabet. While the other teenagers chattered around her, Lucy stared at the stone. The hieroglyphics tantalized her with their hidden meaning but she knew there was a message there for her. The message was that she should learn a language that no one she knew would be able to read, never mind speak.
Lucy left Yorkshire and went to London to study Japanese. She chose London because after enduring her small town at the edge of England it didn’t occur to her that there could be anything better than its exact opposite, the capital. She selected Japanese after some deliberation. Chinese required the study of over six thousand characters whereas Japanese used a paltry two to three thousand. On that point China was in the lead. But the map won the day. Japan was slightly farther away from England and that was an important consideration. Japan was almost as far as you could go without starting to slip around the globe toward home again, unless you went to Australia, but that didn’t count because they spoke English. There were no tears, only relief on all sides. Most of the brothers had left home and this had pushed Lucy and Miriam uncomfortably close. George had died of grief for Noah two years before, in the arms of a woman who wasn’t Miriam, and that was that.
At university Lucy made the exciting discovery that her body ran most efficiently not on her previous diet of fish fingers, Eccles cakes, or even raw cooking apples, but on a regular intake of alcohol and sperm. It made her healthier, happier, and more intelligent. She went for men who were already drunk when they met her, for they would not be put off by her strange eyes. She found that her eyes gave the drunkard something to focus on. Her academic grades soared. It became easier and easier to learn the kanji and fun to practice writing them out. After three years and a lot of sex, Lucy could barely remember the names of the seven (six) brothers and considered herself ready to graduate.
She didn’t contact Miriam. She decided she would only speak to her mother if Miriam called or wrote first. Miriam never did. So when Lucy left her cozy hall of residence and set off for Japan, there was no need for an explanation.
She found an apartment and worked for several companies, editing documents, translating presentations and instruction manuals. Finally, four years ago, she settled in her current position. She became a translator and editor for a small industrial translation company. With no understanding of engineering, electronics, or even electricity—though she was born under a changing lightbulb—Lucy spent her days putting Japanese sentences into English, twisting the words so that the end went at the beginning, articles and plurals appeared, vagaries became specifics.
And here my story drew toward its happy conclusion.
Tokyo was more than Lucy could have hoped for. Too big ever to be found there, too noisy to have to listen to anything, too expensive to worry about saving any money. And under the chaos, a cool and quietly beating heart. An organ that pumped blood through stooping centenarians, three-year-old Nintendo whiz kids, office workers with no time for meals or sleep, and university students with all the time in the world.
Teiji was asleep before I’d finished. Actually, he fell asleep just after I’d started. I knew, but I didn’t stop because I saw that my story was becoming a nice lullaby for him. I didn’t think it rude of him to sleep; he had realized as soon as I’d started to speak that his question was not going to be answered, at least not that day. And it was all for the best. If he’d known I was a child murderer, he might not have loved me anymore.
4
Kameyama puts his elbows on the table, clasps his hands under his chin.
“I’ve asked you the same question ten times. Let me put it to you again. Why did you argue with Lily Bridges? What had happened to cause the incident witnessed by your neighbor?”
“I was angry. I told you.”
“Why?”
I don’t want to lie. I like to be truthful but any truths I tell will get me into trouble, and so honesty is out of the question.
“Nothing much. Some trivial thing.”
The day I went apartment hunting with Lily left me uncomfortable. She had reminded me of my childhood and caused me to wonder where I was. Teiji arrived at my apartment early that evening. A few hours had passed since I’d parted with Lily and I was almost grounded again in Tokyo. Lily was beginning to seem like a strange ghost from the past. I couldn’t understand why I’d mentioned the hike. I regretted inviting her and hoped it would rain so the trip would be canceled.
Teiji took a shower. I listened to the water pouring over his body, occasional knocks and clinks as he reached for soap or shampoo, his feet on the floor when he climbed out. I heard the towel rub back and forth across his neck, back, legs. He cleared his throat a couple of times. The plughole gurgled and the bathroom door opened. I looked up at him. Water slipped from his black hair as if it had lost the power to be wet, as if it were droplets of mercury. A couple of rubs with the towel and his hair was almost dry. And then he came to me and rested his head in my lap. He looked up at me with one eye as I stroked his hair. The other eye was squashed against my thigh. He reached out one arm and groped around on the floor for his camera. His fingers touched it. He lifted it and, without moving his head, looking up at my face through the viewfinder, clicked the silver button, smiled at me. He hung the camera around his neck, where it belonged. I leaned over and kissed him.
But Lily’s words were heavy in my thoughts and I couldn’t force myself not to speak of them.
“Teiji, why do you take so many photographs? You don’t sell them. You don’t even put them on your walls.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then, “Don’t you like them? I try to give you ones I think you’ll like.”
Teiji’s voice is coming back to me, faintly, but it’s there in my ears.
“Yes, thank you, I do. But there are so many more. I don’t understand why.”
“I just take them. It’s a habit.”
“But there’s no final purpose?”
“I’m collecting them.”
“For what?”
“My collection.”
“Teiji, what is your collection?”
“All my photographs.”
He moved to sit behind me with his legs around mine. The camera swung forward and hit the back of my head.
“Do you want me to stop taking photographs?”
“No.” I wished I hadn’t started this. Damn Lily, making me question the very thing that had drawn me to Teiji. He had no answers for me. I knew that already.
“Because I wouldn’t.”
“I know.”
“Why are we talking about this?”
“I don’t want you to stop taking pictures at all. I just wonder why you don’t try to do something with them.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know. Such as selling them.”
“I don’t need to. If I needed the money, I’d sell them, but I don’t because I have a good job that pays me enough money.”
Teiji dashed off an hour later to do the evening shift at the restaurant. I was left feeling foolish for starting such a stupid conversation. But something was still bothering me, and it wasn’t just Lily’s questions about what Teiji should do with his pictures. It was the thought of those two boxes in his flat. Stacks and stacks of photographs that recounted years of his life, perhaps back to his very first camera. He never showed me any of them. I couldn’t see why and I couldn’t stop wondering about it. He sometimes gave me pictures containing images of Lucy, but nothing from before Lucy. I knew so little about Teiji.
What did I know? That destiny led Teiji both to photography and to the noodle shop. I knew
certain facts about him. He grew up near Kagoshima on the southern edge of Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s biggest islands. He was born in the shadow of Sakurajima, an active volcano on its own island, that spewed dark smoke and rumbled deeply like a far-off highway at nighttime. Until he was nine years old he thought that it was normal for mountains to behave in such a manner and lived in hope only of seeing a glorious eruption one day. In the meantime, he spent his days whizzing through the countryside on an old bicycle. His mother made his lunch. She pressed hot rice into fat triangles, pushed a sour plum into the center of each, and covered them in dark seaweed. When they had cooled, he stuffed them into his pockets and set off along the country roads, careering this way and that, but with the volcanic island never far from sight. To celebrate his first day at junior high school, Teiji’s father gave him an old camera. Teiji took it with him on his long bike journeys. It hung around his neck and bumped up and down as he cycled. He shot pictures of the volcano from every angle.
His other favorite subject was water. He would wander to the sea’s edge and take off his shoes to paddle. Teiji could never quite believe in water or smoke and felt sure that if he photographed them, they would not appear in the picture. He took photos of his toes through the water’s rippling surface, expecting to see an image only of his toes. When the pictures were developed he rushed to the shop to collect them. Then he took them to the sea to compare the image with reality. Sometimes he could not decide which was the image and which was real. He knew he would have to take more pictures until he found the answer. Soon he forgot the volcano island, though it was always there, making smoke, sending it out and up into the sky.
When Teiji was fourteen his father died. Teiji and his mother moved to Tokyo where his mother’s brother ran a noodle shop. His mother began to work there and Teiji helped out at weekends. He was slender but he was strong and proved helpful in moving delivery crates, lifting furniture to sweep the floor. But he could not rest without the sea and often walked down to Tokyo Bay. The water there was gray in the day and black at night. He wandered through corridors of concrete and neon, confused by the hugeness of the buildings, the number of people. The city moved like thick, dirty water but Teiji could not find its source. He walked the streets night and day, hoping to capture an answer with his camera. At seventeen he dropped out of high school and went to work full-time in the noodle shop. He spoke little to his mother and uncle, but he worked hard and no one complained about him. Then his mother died.
This is the story Teiji had told me on another dark night, with a few embellishments of my own. There is much that he never shared. Did he miss his mother? Perhaps. The boxes in his room contained photographs of his whole life. But he never showed them to me and now that I was finally finding the courage to steal a secret look in those treasure chests, I planned to search for something else. I didn’t see the pictures that told of his childhood.
Those were the stories in my head. Who can say where I got them from? At first they were enough—he was the magical statue I found in Shinjuku and he was perfect—but now I wanted more. There were many missing years. I wanted to see his photographs, open up the boxes.
Of course, once you have had the idea, it is impossible to lose it again. I knew that I would see the pictures so I decided to save myself hours or weeks of agonizing and do it immediately. About twenty minutes after Teiji had gone, I set off for his apartment. He kept a spare key in a crack in the wall beside his front door. I fished it out and let myself in.
I went straight to the boxes. I was nervous. In some ways his room belonged to me—I knew every nook and cranny, every speck and stain—but in other respects it was forbidden territory. Beneath the cardboard flaps were envelopes and folders full of pictures, all in neat piles. The first box held the pictures of his childhood. I wasn’t so interested in those for the moment. I closed the box and pushed it back against the wall. The contents of the other box were a chronicle of his life since arriving in Tokyo. Toward the top were the pictures he’d taken of me. I imagined the bottom ones were his earlier treasures, his last days at high school, first days in the restaurant. I dug for the middle layer. I didn’t want to know about his arrival here. I wanted to know about the in-between Tokyo years, the ones before he met Lucy.
There were the usual pictures of water, of pavement scenes, of train stations and tunnels. Then I found what I suppose I had been looking for. A picture of a young woman. She was looking at the camera through the window of a bus. She had a soft, round face, deeply set eyes and hair cut into a bob which brushed her chin. She looked as if she could have been pretty but she glowered at the camera through tired, angry eyes. Was this Teiji’s lover before he found me?
There were more pictures. I followed her backward through them until I found the first. I was excited by what I saw. She was onstage in a play. The picture must have been taken from the back of the theater for she was just a small figure under the lights. She was wearing a soldier’s uniform and had a gun over her shoulder. Her mouth was open in a silent shout. The stage was small and she was the only actor. The walls of the theater were black. I wondered at Teiji’s being there. Had he gone there because he knew her, or was he there because he wanted to see the play and then he happened to find her? He’d never mentioned any interest in theater, but if he’d met her before, there should have been an earlier photograph. Prior to the soldier, there was nothing, just a few shots of a man in the noodle shop smiling stiffly through damp, red eyes at the camera.
I followed her forward again. There were several more pictures taken in theaters. She was in different costumes but it was hard to make out her face. There were other pictures: coffee shops, parks, a riverside, parties. As I went through them I saw that there were fewer and fewer where she was an actress and more where she was at parties, sitting on worn tatami or on a bed. Her face became fatter and paler through the pictures. Then there were only parties. She came to look sad and then sadder. Her tight-fitting clothes were crumpled and stained. The last one I had a chance to see showed the woman lying on her front on the pavement, head to one side. The corners of her mouth were raised. She might have been grimacing or smiling. I couldn’t tell. I wondered what on earth she was doing. She must have been drunk.
“They’re private.”
Teiji’s voice was flat. He had entered the room without a noise—or I had been too engrossed to hear it—and stood behind me.
I had no answer. I was caught red-handed. The only thing I could say was sorry, but I really wasn’t sorry that I’d looked, only that I’d been caught. I stood but couldn’t face Teiji.
“I know. I shouldn’t have looked.”
“We didn’t have any customers, so I got the evening off. I was going to call you.”
I shrugged. “Now you don’t need to.”
“No. I don’t.” He walked around in front of me, looked into my eyes.
I thought I’d blown it. He didn’t say anything for a few moments. Now that I’d seen this woman, the actress, he looked different to me. His eyes seemed darker, his hair thicker, his bones more clearly defined. He had come into focus, somehow. I stared back, waited for him to speak.
“Let’s stay in. Come on.” With one foot he pushed the open box to the corner of the room. He pulled me to the bed and sat beside me. There was an expression of sadness on his face when he held my chin and looked at me. I think he felt bad for catching me out. He was probably angry but he was also sorry for me. He watched me for minutes. I didn’t know what he was looking for, but I was worried of what he might see.
I couldn’t get the scowling woman out of my head. I needed to ask.
“Who was she?”
“Sachi.”
“Where is she now?”
“I don’t know. She’s gone.”
“She just went all of a sudden?”
“We finished. She left. I don’t try to find her.” He sighed deeply. “Lucy, I found you and I don’t think of Sachi anymore.”
I didn
’t speak. It was hard to believe he didn’t think of her anymore when I was sure I would never stop thinking of her.
“When something’s gone, it’s gone. You look for the next thing. I found you.”
We made love but I was unable to enjoy it. I felt guilty because I’d broken into Teiji’s apartment, guiltier still because he was showing no anger. And mostly I couldn’t enjoy it because I was looking at Sachi’s unhappy face all the time.
The next morning was bright and sunny so the hike wouldn’t be canceled. Lucy was now glad. It would be good to see other people, good to get away from Teiji and Sachi. I was still wary of Lily but that feeling was almost canceled by my desire to see Natsuko. Smiling, always calm, sometimes bossy Natsuko.
Natsuko was my first friend in Tokyo. She was the second friend in Lucy’s life, after the long-faced, trombone-playing Lizzie. We worked together when I first arrived. When Natsuko found a better job with another company, she worked as hard as she could to ensure a job there for me. It took more than three years and we have both been there ever since. Natsuko is about my age and is bilingual. She speaks English with an accent that is sometimes Australian and sometimes American because she traveled so much as a child. Occasionally she sounds German and from time to time Irish. She has a round dimpled face and even when she is not smiling her lips are set in the form of a smile. I have often wondered at it. She looks perpetually happy, in the way that I look perpetually gloomy, for even when I smile, my mouth does not always move. It is an effort to draw my lips into a smile to keep people happy, when in fact I am perfectly content inside.
We had our lunch together every day. Bentos of rice, fish, seaweed, cans of green tea. Sometimes we chatted about work, about our weekends. Often we didn’t find any conversation to make, but we still sat together because that was good enough. Once a month or so we went out into the mountains together and hiked for a day. On the way down we would stop at a hot spring, strip off, and let our tired muscles tingle in steamy water.
The Earthquake Bird Page 5
