The Earthquake Bird

by Susanna Jones

  I regarded Natsuko as a constant. She never asked me about my private life. Sometimes she told me of hers—a series of unsatisfactory boyfriends, her desperation to move out of her parents’ house though she couldn’t afford to rent an apartment—and left a space open for me to volunteer tidbits of my own life. I just didn’t. Not because I didn’t trust Natsuko or felt uncomfortable. I loved everything she was. I didn’t want to spoil it by talking about myself.

  Natsuko helped me when I joined the company and she was there beside me every day. She lent me pencils and dictionaries. She taught me new kanji and Japanese slang. Now she is not so sure about Lucy. She probably wonders why I never talked about myself, what I was hiding from her, and so she avoids me. I don’t mind being ignored. It can remove many obstacles and irritations of daily life. But I can’t deny that I am a little disappointed in Natsuko.

  However, in those days she was good to me. She helped me find my job, and she also found the string quartet, for which I will always be grateful.

  I arrived at Shinjuku. It was early morning but the station was already alive. People in suits boarded trains for work, though it was a weekend. A few people in crushed, smoky work clothes headed home from the previous night’s fun looking tired and shriveled. I passed a group of chattering high-school students who carried kendo swords in cases over their shoulders. I looked for Lily, half hoping that she had overslept. But she was there, with Natsuko and a couple of other people. Lily had invited Bob. Bob had brought his colleague, Richard. Natsuko was in the middle of the throng, busily introducing herself to the others, beaming.

  “Hi, Lucy. I’m so glad you invited all these people. It’s going to be so much fun.”

  She sounded Australian today. She’d lived in Melbourne between the ages of six and ten. Any activity that was fun or energetic brought back her Australian accent. At work she tended to sound American. I guessed it was because she went to university and studied translation in New York.

  “Hi, Luce,” said Bob. “So you’re going to lead the expedition into the mountains? Hope you’ve brought supplies in case we get lost.”

  “Don’t joke,” I said. “You don’t know me well enough. There’s more than a little chance that if I were in charge here we’d all go over the edge of a precipice, or perish in a freak landslide. Disaster is always at my heels. No, Natsuko is our navigator for the day and a very good one too. She knows all the best routes and the hidden tracks away from the crowds.”

  “It’s a clear day so we should get some good views,” Natsuko said. “I can’t wait to get up there. I need the exercise too. I’ve been drinking like a fish for the past month and I’m almost bursting out of my Lycra.”

  She lifted her T-shirt a few inches to prove this and laughed. Richard and Bob immediately pulled their clothes around to display their own ample midriffs. Amid the boasting and teasing a weedy voice piped up.

  “Will we see Mount Fuji?”

  I had forgotten Lily. I was surprised she had heard of Mount Fuji but I supposed that it only took a few weeks in Japan to pick up certain facts.

  “Yes, I hope so.” Natsuko showed her map to Lily. “See. There are a couple of viewing points on the trail. If it’s clear we’ll see it at least twice. You ought to see Fuji, you know. It’ll be a kind of initiation for you. Does everyone have plenty of water and something for lunch?”

  She herded us to the train. The carriage was full of other hikers heading out in the same direction. Most were middle-aged or elderly. When Natsuko and I went to the mountains, we rarely saw other people under the age of forty. That morning was typical. There were all-female groups and a few mixed parties, none made up only of men. They had expensive-looking walking gear—Gore-Tex shoes, mountain sticks, shiny rucksacks, and hiking hats. The women wore round hats with floppy brims. The men had peaked caps.

  Our group was less professionally attired. We sported a mixture of jeans and leggings, old sneakers, baggy T-shirts, and no hats, though Richard wore a red bandanna. I was pleased Bob and Richard had come. I was in a solitary mood and it is much easier to be alone in a large group than in a threesome. Natsuko was in her element as mother hen, showing Lily the map and explaining where we were going.

  The mountains in Yamanashi were soft and green, with air that smelled of soil, rain, and pine trees. I had been breathing the Tokyo air that smelled of people and traffic for months. When we arrived at the base of our mountain, I felt lightheaded.

  “I love the countryside,” Lily said, coming to stand beside me. “Doesn’t it make you feel like a kid again? We used to go walking, Andy and me, in the Yorkshire Moors and on the Dales. It’s beautiful.”

  I withheld a scream. Why did she have to keep going on about that damned place? How could I concentrate on being in Yamanashi if she was going to dredge up various parts of Yorkshire with every comment? I gave her remark a perfunctory nod and went to find Bob. We walked together until the mountain became steep. There were old farmhouses here and there with gardens full of bright flowers and thick green trees.

  “I think,” Bob said, “Lily’s settling in. Thanks to you.”

  “I really haven’t done anything. Finding the apartment was easy.”

  “She’s more confident now. And learning Japanese too. She said you started her off.”

  “Well, she needed to be able to say something at least. God knows, she talks enough in English.”

  Bob smiled. “You’re a good Japanese teacher. You certainly helped me with a tricky situation at the dentist’s. How are your teeth?”

  “Just fine. Yours?”

  “A bit more treatment to go. Soon be over, though. These trees are beautiful.”

  We had left the roads and houses and were now on a dirt path surrounded by tall pines. They stood silent and still, like breathing statues. We began to climb. A stream ran along beside us for much of the way and a couple of times we had to cross it. Bob and I helped each other over, then waited for the others. As the climbing became tougher, the chattering declined to occasional comments, then silence apart from the sound of breath and feet. That is my favorite part of a hike, when all the words and sentences have been talked out of you and people slip, one by one, into their own thoughts and dreams.

  After a couple of hours we arrived at a low peak. We could see for miles around. Distant mountains and valleys, small villages and paddy fields. Natsuko consulted her book.

  “We should be able to see Mount Fuji in that direction.” She pointed to a range of higher mountains, covered with blue sky. We clustered around but could see no sign of Fuji.

  “It’s big enough,” Richard said. “If it was there, we’d see it. The book must be wrong.”

  “No,” Bob looked through his binoculars, “it’s just too hazy. I think Fuji’s hiding from us today.”

  Lily put one hand on my shoulder and pointed with the other. “What’s that?”

  I looked. Above the tops of the other mountains was empty space. But higher in the sky, as if suspended in it, was the unmistakable cone of Fuji’s peak. There seemed to be no mountain below it, just the silhouette of the peak sitting in the sky.

  “It’s like a ghost,” I said.

  “Can mountains have ghosts?” Natsuko asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Richard sat on the ledge, opened his rucksack for lunch. “Why not? It’s a dead volcano. If it can be dead, why can’t it have a ghost?”

  “It’s extinct. That’s not exactly the same as dead. Dead has a personal, individual connotation, worthy of ghosts,” Bob, as an English teacher, pointed out.

  “In Japanese it’s the same. The word for extinct volcano is shikazan. It means ‘dead volcano,’ or ‘dead fire mountain.’ I don’t see why it shouldn’t have a ghost of itself.” Natsuko shielded her eyes from the sun to see better.

  “I think you’ll find it’s a trick of the light,” Bob said.

  “We know,” said Natsuko. “But we want to think of it as a ghost. Look at it hovering up there. I
t is spooky, supernatural. When I move away from my parents’ house and into a place of my own, I want to have a view of Mount Fuji. That’s the most important thing for me. I’d like to be able to look out and see it every day. That’s all I want. If I had that, I’m sure I’d be happy forever.”

  I smiled at her, turned to the peak in the sky. One by one the others had enough of the view and settled on the ground for lunch. Lucy could not take her eyes from it and wondered what kind of picture Teiji would take if he were there. It was a view that could have been designed for Teiji. Lucy could hardly believe that he wasn’t with her. Then she remembered the photographs in the box and her face burned.

  “It’s private,” he had said. “I don’t think about her anymore.”

  Sachi. I would think about her forever. Her angry eyes, the face that became whiter and puffier with each photograph. The parties where she looked drawn and unamused, always away from other people, wearing dirty, crumpled clothes.

  Lily passed me a segment of her orange. I ate it but hardly turned my gaze away from the sky. She shuffled around so that she was sitting next to me.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  I nodded.

  “You really love Japan, don’t you?”

  “I suppose so. Yes, I do.”

  “Do you think you’ll be here forever?”

  “I have no idea.” The image of the ghost volcano seemed to shimmer and I blinked several times and finally turned to face Lily. “I can’t imagine leaving now, that’s true.”

  We ate in silence, sharing rice balls and barley tea.

  “Doesn’t Teiji like the mountains?”

  I smiled. “I think he does, but he loves Tokyo best.”

  I never took Teiji when I went places with friends. I didn’t want to share him. I would meet him later, in the darkest parts of the night on the street by an empty station, or in one of our apartments. To meet him in an open space, in bright lights, was to expose him to the world from which I wanted to keep him secret.

  Perhaps it was strange to Lily that I spent time without him, for her next question was, “Are you close?”

  “We are. Very close.”

  “But you don’t do everything together. That’s nice. You’re lucky, Lucy.”

  Am I?

  The descent was fast. We slipped and slid down the paths, tripping sometimes on rocks and roots. I let my feet go too fast and caught my ankle on a tree stump. I flew off the path and landed on my side with my ankle folded under my thigh. I tried to stand but the pain made me dizzy. I sat back down again, bit my lip in some intuitive attempt to move the pain to another place.

  Lily rushed to my side. “OK. Let me check it. Pull your trouser leg up, and your sock down. That’s it.”

  She loosened my shoe and took my foot in her hands. She prodded firmly but without hurting me.

  “It’s not broken. It’s a nasty sprain, though. Let me get a bandage on it.”

  The rest of the group stood around and watched. Bob put one hand on my shoulder and squeezed.

  “It’s not that bad. It’ll be fine.”

  “I know. I didn’t say it was bad.”

  Bob and Natsuko exchanged amused glances. I realized how defensive I’d sounded. Lily gave me a painkiller from a little bag in her rucksack, and some water. After a few minutes’ rest I was ready to hop slowly. I felt better. The pain was still sharp but Lily’s comforting treatment had touched something deeper in Lucy. All the way down the mountain she glowed in the warmth of Lily’s hands on her ankle, of lying on the soil being bandaged and cured. What had touched her most of all was Lily’s voice, so unusually calm and competent. Where had that voice come from? Lucy had heard it before in another place.

  “You’re very good in a crisis, Lily. Did you do Girl Scout training or something?” Bob was also impressed.

  “No, no. It’s just because I’m a nurse.”

  “A nurse? You never told us that.”

  Bob was surprised but I knew, as soon as Lily said it, that it made perfect sense.

  “Didn’t I? It wasn’t meant to be a secret. Now I’m working in a bar the topic of nursing doesn’t come up very much.”

  “I’m glad you were here,” I said, truthfully. “Not that it’s so bad.”

  At the bottom Natsuko guided us along small roads to a main one and then to an onsen, a hot spring. After a stretching hike there is nothing better than soaking in the rich minerals of the mountains. We separated, men and women. I entered the changing room with Lily and Natsuko.

  Lily was uncomfortable stripping off in front of other women but did it because she was more embarrassed about being different and making a fuss. I thought her qualms were unnecessary. Lily had a nice body, delicate and slender, while Lucy is built like a crashed tank. Lucy didn’t mind communal bathing at all. Once she was in the protection of the hot water, she enjoyed the fact that she could take up more space than the other women. Her body had a greater surface area and therefore she must be deriving more pleasure from the piping water on her skin.

  We sat, three in a row, at the taps for the pre-bathing ritual. We showered while sitting on small wooden stools, and filled bowls of water to splosh over our skin. Lily watched Natsuko and me, to make sure she did everything the same way. Once we had washed, I turned the cold tap on full and blasted my ankle for a few moments until it was almost numb.

  There were three baths. One was indoors and already full. Women lay stretched out, eyes closed, hair kept off the face by small yellow towels. We went outside where the two baths were almost empty. Water ran from one into the other. A hill rose sharply behind and a thin waterfall slipped over the edge, fell into a stream near the baths. From every direction was the sound of water.

  Natsuko went straight for the hottest bath and sat with a small towel over her face. Lily followed but yelped at the heat and jumped out. Her legs were pink from the knees down.

  “Don’t you like it?” Natsuko asked lazily from under her wet towel.

  “I like the idea of it.” Lily hovered, not sure what to do. “It’s just a bit hot.”

  “I love it. If I ever have a house of my own, I’d want a natural hot spring in the garden. I’d be happy forever then.” Natsuko sighed.

  “Perhaps this one is a better temperature,” I suggested and went into the other. It was, slightly, and Lily entered the bath with me, carefully and tentatively, limb by limb until just her head stuck out.

  The cool air of the late afternoon was as refreshing as the water we bathed in and I closed my eyes to feel it more acutely and to listen to the different sounds of water. I lifted my injured ankle to rest it on the bath’s edge. Of course, in a couple of seconds I was thinking of Teiji and how I wished he was in the bath with me, no one else around. Teiji didn’t care about my appearance. I sometimes wondered if he even knew what I looked like. When he stared at me he seemed to be looking beneath the surface of my skin, but I didn’t know what he could see. I didn’t mind. As long as I kept his attention in this way, I felt lucky. Before my fantasy could get farther than Teiji ducking under water to find my legs with his lips, Lily started talking again.

  “I wonder what Andy would make of this.”

  “He might like it.”

  “Doubt it. He doesn’t much like things he doesn’t know. I’m beginning to think that I only really like things I don’t know. Funny that. It never occurred to me we were so different. Now it seems obvious. I wish I was like you.”

  I was amazed and looked at her, probably suspiciously. Her face was pink under her dyed red hair. She looked uncomfortable in the heat of the bath.

  “No, I do. You’ve got it all together. You’re so brainy too. Do you think you and Teiji will get married?”

  “I don’t think so.” And with no warning my eyes filled with tears. I splashed them slightly to give myself a reason to wipe my face before Lily noticed.

  “Why not?”

  I massaged my ankle. The pain was beginning to subside.

  “It�
�s not that kind of relationship.”

  And immediately I regretted saying it. I didn’t know what kind of relationship it was. I’d never thought about it before. Now I had given Lily fuel for another round of questioning.

  “Anyway, I’m fine.”

  “Is it not a long-term thing, then?”

  “It might be but I just haven’t thought about it like that. I mean, we don’t discuss it because we already have what we want.”

  “I’d love to meet him.”

  Perhaps she should. Then I could show Teiji that I had friends, too. I was not so obsessed with him that I had to break into his apartment when he was out and rifle through his most personal possessions. That was just something that happened, a one-off, a whim. I told Lily none of this. I had a feeling that simply by lying there in the steam, running the thoughts through my mind, Lily might understand them. She leaned over and pressed my ankle between her fingers.

  “How does it feel?”

  “Fine. Just twinging a bit.”

  “You want to rest it this evening. Get a compress on it and put your feet up.”

  “Sounds good. Did you always want to be a nurse?”

  “Yes, always. I never thought of anything else.”

  “Now you work in a bar. Do you miss nursing?”

  “Strangely, no. But I still am a nurse and I’ll go back to it. I don’t stop feeling like a nurse just because I’m not working as one. You know, I am a nurse. It’s what I’ll always be.”

  “Looking after people, picking up the pieces.”

  “Yes.” She smiled and splashed water over her arms. “Don’t you feel that way about translating?”

  “The opposite. Even though I work as a translator, I don’t feel like one. I don’t think of myself as a translator. Perhaps because I don’t feel as if I speak two languages anymore. It’s like one big one with different aspects.”

  “The only Japanese I know is what you taught me. Do you speak English or Japanese with Teiji?”