I sit on a bench, dumbstruck and lonely. Maybe this is how my sister felt on the streets of San Francisco, poor, hungry, cold. Grasping the tails of an incomprehensible language. Wishing for a place to sleep. Looking at pedestrians, wondering why no one stopped to offer a helping hand.
I am soaked in self-pity. Then it rains and I begin to shiver. Cornered, I do what I always do in absolute desperation: I bite my lip and plunge into the street. Pedaling like a racer, I try to keep up with the traffic, maneuvering between autos traveling on the wrong side of the road. I edge into a narrow lane and barely avoid entering the freeway on-ramp. A bus swerves away from me, brakes screeching. I turn my head and its headlights stab my eyes. Blinded, I hit a bump in the road, sideways. My tires skitter across the rain-slicked asphalt. I carom off a retaining wall. Somehow, I don’t go down. The bus would have flattened me.
Shaking, I coast into a parking lot and spot an old man on a bicycle. No time to gather my wits. I chase after him, shouting questions in my bad Japanese: How do I get out of this airport? Where can I find inexpensive lodging? Where’s the public rest room?
He looks at me the way people look at dogs foaming at the mouth. He pedals harder to get away. I tail him like a shadow. There is no way the old man is going to get away from me. Biking up the Pacific Coast has given me muscles, so I feel powerful. I chase him as easily as a cat toys with a mouse. The sight of me swooping down on him must be terrifying because he pumps standing, as though his life depends on it. I should feel a twinge of guilt, but I don’t. It is late: he must be going home. And home couldn’t be in the airport. I am feeling nasty and have no desire to sleep on an airport bench.
“Gomen nasai!”—Pardon me—I shout, but he ignores me.
After a few blocks, his strength fizzles and he paces himself, realizing that he can’t get away from the lunatic screaming incomprehensible Japanese. I tell myself I can ignore him as well. Just shadow him. Sooner or later, he’s bound to lead me out of the airport. The rain runs down my face, misting my glasses as I gloat at my brilliance, my prey unwittingly guiding me out of the airport and meandering me through guarded checkpoints and a maze of construction-project detours.
In the second it takes me to swipe water from my glasses, he shifts into hyperdrive and runs a red light. I skid to a stop, the cross traffic separating us. I feel bad, good, guilty, tired-sick. That old guy is one slippery noodle. It is a daring escape, very gutsy and well timed. I explode with laughter, roaring my appreciation to the wet sky. A sharp sensation of being alive suffuses me, tickling, tingling. I’m not miserable anymore. The rain comes down hard, soaking me, and through my foggy glasses I see him glancing back as he swings the corner. I wave farewell. A magnificent night. Everything forgivable.
I wander for half an hour and stumble on an empty lot next to a bamboo grove—the perfect place to steal some pillow time. I am so relieved to get out of the airport that nothing bothers me. Within four hours of setting foot in Japan, I have already harassed a citizen and trespassed on private property, courting trouble with the law at every turn. I don’t care. I could always plead ignorance.
The last time I was here, my family was passing through on our way to America. We changed planes and never left the airport. My mother had always dreamed of visiting Japan. I remember telling her that someday when I was bigger, rich, and famous in America, I would come back to tour Japan. Never in twenty years had I thought I would find myself in Japan camping in an empty lot like a hobo.
I pitch the tent under a large oak out of the downpour and in a cloud of bloodthirsty mosquitoes. I strip to my underwear, crawl into my sleeping bag, and reward myself with a candy bar. As I close my eyes, a whining, screaming metallic thunder startles me into a cold sweat. I peep outside, a jumbo jet booms overhead. The lot is at the end of the airfield. Oh, gee. I wish I had pocketed a few mini-bottles of scotch on the plane.
At 2 a.m., I wake to bright lights and what feels like a small earthquake or a landing jumbo jet. An emergency runway? I bolt out of the tent and stop dead in my tracks. Bright-eyed monsters coming at me. Naked save for a pair of cotton briefs, I quiver in the flood of headlights from a battalion of tractors. They are coming for me. Gonna run me over. OH-SHIT! My tent! My bike! My passport! My pants! They growl forward. Coming. Metal screeching. They grind to a halt. A million incandescent watts pin me where I stand. I am camping on a parking lot for construction vehicles and earth-moving equipment. The drivers look at me. I look at them. They don’t say a word. How very Japanese. Maybe they think I am Japanese. I grin, wave hello, then burrow into my tent. They cut the engines and the lights. I go back to sleep.
Morning brings a drizzle as fine as fish bones. In convenience-store parking lots, workers slurp instant noodles from Styrofoam bowls, fogging up their car windows, making small conspiracies of their meager privacy. Japanese are on their way to work, grim faces looking out windshields, truck drivers with white cotton gloves, office dwellers in dark suits. Villages are emptying. Children walk to school, quietly obedient in navy-blue uniforms. The populace ambles dispassionately toward duties, so little said in these early hours. People move in complete silence, their shoes louder than their breathing. Long electric worms hiss into concrete stations, swallow the people, and hiss away.
I ride oceanward, planning to go north along the Pacific Coast. Daybreak in Chiba Province is beautiful with fields of sleeping grass and lakes enshrouded in mists. The days are shortening, the chill hinting a fading fall. Persimmons polka-dot the roadsides like windfallen roses, ravished by drunken clouds of fruit flies. I stop at a wall with a laden tree branch nodding over the top. Juicy persimmons hang no more than two steps and a leap away. I am rationalizing minor theft when an old Japanese woman comes out the gate. Blushing, I bow. She smiles and asks a question in Japanese, gesturing at the tree. Beautiful, I reply, taking money out of my wallet. May I buy some? She shakes her head at the cash, disappears inside, then comes back with a woven basket of four ripe lovelies. Present, present, she says in English. She watches me eat. I bite off the point, then suck the flesh out, savoring each tender lip. Nectar, food of angels, this is how sugar should taste. Orange-red mush covers my face. She tells me I should go south to a more moderate climate. I take this as a sign and turn around toward Tokyo.
Into the megalopolis, I merge myself with the great masses of Japanese. It takes me fourteen hours to go seventy miles. I stagger in and out of crushes of people, hemmed in on every side by cars, trucks, bicyclists, and pedestrians. Up and down ramps, under bridges and over freeways, I carry my loaded bike. I accept the vague state of being constantly lost. The streets make no sense, laid in the feudal days when roads were designed to confuse invading armies. They go in spirals, circles, radiate from some center, come together in acute wedges, making comedies or marvels of buildings.
I lodge for a week at a hostel and meander all over the city, gasping at the dark undercarriage of Tokyo, its industry, its strata of life, its one-mindedness, its fascination with America. A hacking cough develops in my lungs. When I blow my nose, snot comes out black. My eyes are bloodshot from the air pollution. My throat is scratchy from car fumes. I wash it with can after can of Coca-Cola. Eventually, I get on my bike and swear never to return, in any case not with mere pocket change.
Too cheap to buy a map, I fail to escape Tokyo in a day. As the afternoon fades, I take refuge on the bank of a river that divides Tokyo and Yokohama. Sitting on a boulder next to the swamp of river reeds, I eat an early supper of rice balls wrapped in seaweed. Steamy runoffs from manufacturing plants crack the river white. The sun sets in apocalyptic colors as though the air itself is burning, turning the smog gold, the clouds molten, dangerous. Smokestacks poison the sky. The skyline of bridges and skyscrapers folds behind even more skylines of the same. Everything is smeared in this bizarre glow, even my hands. I think I can feel it on my face. Magnificent colors, a fine death, glorious, defiant. A despairing beauty. A consummation. Abruptly, the taste of rice and nori is p
recious on my tongue. In my nostrils, a heaviness of diesel exhaust.
The moment might have fragmented me if it weren’t for Michikosan and Tanaka-san. Something needy in my face must have stopped them short as they emerged from the grass. Smiling kindly, they lead me back to their home of plywood and appliance boxes wired together in the tall reeds. We sit on homemade stools, drinking green tea and exchanging phrases in two languages. Boys play baseball in the field beyond. Shouts in bright lights. Above us night is slowly hardening.
In the morning, when I leave them, I wish I don’t have to. I lower my head and pedal to Mount Fuji. The tourists have followed summer down the mountains. I want to talk but there is no one. I wander the lakeshores, watching the snow line creeping down the volcano. Silence distills the days into one long continuous moment. I drift onward. I talk to myself, hum favorite tunes in my head for hours on end. Solo touring provides too much time for contemplation, self-doubt. These are times I would trade two mountain ranges for one new friend. In America, you can make friends with a good joke—even one borrowed from a book. Stand on a street corner with a map, wearing a puzzled look, and someone is bound to offer help, maybe an invitation for coffee. Smile and they’ll let you camp in their backyard. Charm them and you’ll eat at their table and sleep on their couch with the good comforter.
Japanese rarely invite strangers home. Campgrounds in Japan are few and expensive. I bed down wherever I find myself at dusk: school grounds, golf courses, temples, dikes, construction lots, ruins of castles. Once I slept in a pet cemetery. But I will always love Japan for its endless fascination with miniaturizing nature, its countless sculptured gardens.
At the Seiko Museum, a late busload of Japanese tourists strolls through the garden with a tour guide who is pointing out the leaves’ changing colors. They catch me cooking spaghetti on the opposite side of a gurgling brook, my tent staked beside an overgrown bonsai, the bike propped against a carefully assembled mound of rocks. The guide stutters, bewildered at this new exhibition. I wave hello, then bow. They bow. I bow. They bow. I smile, they smile. I bring up my hands, miming them taking photographs. Ahhhh, they agree among themselves, nodding. Cameras come up, flashes going off. Ever the gracious host, I pose for them, stirring the pot, staking the tent, standing with the bike.
They smile and bow their thanks as the guide ushers them toward the main building. I flourish a theatrical obeisance. All quiet again, I eat my spaghetti and sip my green tea, waiting for a security guard to frog-march me out by the cuff of my neck. No one comes. I go to bed, chuckling to myself.
I meander from Narita to the outskirts of Kyoto and back. On my return leg, I am in a hurry to catch a flight. A Japanese friend had urged me to take the train. Having studied abroad at an American university, he was sharp on the differences between American and Japanese cultures. “Take the train,” he insisted. “It’s safer and the best way to get back to Narita in time for your plane. They probably don’t allow bikes on the long-distance trains, but don’t worry. Just take your bike on anyway. Japanese people are very polite. They won’t say anything.”
The November weather is deteriorating so I’m tempted. Already extended beyond my budget, I have no choice but to ride straight into the teeth of it. One day, an English-speaking fisherman tells me a gale warning has even the big freighters heading for ports. All afternoon, a strong wind broadsides me. Around dusk, it quiets. Somewhere south of Shimizu, I find a stretch of clean beach—a rarity in Japan. The thought of a campfire is irresistible. Storm warning forgotten, I cook and eat a meal of hard-boiled eggs and curry with spaghetti next to a crackling driftwood fire, my campsite a good thirty yards from the surf. The wind picks up when I hit the sack. An hour later, it rains. The wind blows harder. My tent, unstaked on the sand, begins to warp, shaking like a lump of Jell-O. I peek out at the surf crashing white in the ambient light. It looks rougher than before. I zip up my sleeping bag, telling myself it will pass. I’ve sat through plenty of storms. Once I sat in my tent two days waiting for the rain to stop. How bad can it get?
The rain turns pelting. Gusts lift the tent’s windward end. I poke my head outside and taste sand and a tang of salt in the air. This is bad. The ocean looks a lot closer, maybe fifteen yards off. The tide is coming in. I am worried. Okay, time to pack up. Holding down the jumping tent, I dress as fast as I can. Although I have a flashlight clipped to my baseball cap, I do everything by feel, instincts gained from months of touring. I can’t get out of the tent. Without my weight, it would turn into a kite in this wind. I figure out a way to collapse the tent from inside. The surf rolls in fast. I’m racing the ocean. Frantically, I bundle my gear and drag it up a ten-yard concrete embankment, running, slipping, scrambling back and forth in horizontal rain. It’s pitch-dark in the storm and my rain-splattered glasses aren’t helping. As I push the bike up to safety, the ocean mats my campsite.
I huddle with my pile of gear on the walkway above the embankment. Trees bow and bushes quiver like slaves before an angry master. The heavens crack, thundering. Lightning scrawls across swollen clouds, tearing up the night and putting the fear of God into me. I mutter thanks to Him, Buddha, and my dead sister Chi. Another minute and things might have turned out very badly. I don’t want to think about it. I strap the panniers onto the racks and push the bike to the road. Rain stings my face. I’m drenched, my teeth chattering. A steaming bowl of instant noodles and hot coffee would be really good. I need shelter quickly, but my funds aren’t sufficient for a hotel room even if I trip over one. The wind is too strong for riding, so I slog two miles back up the road to a 7-Eleven.
I step inside the heated store. My glasses fog up. I’m smiling gleefully like a maniac. I made it. I beat the storm! I whoop and rip off my helmet, dripping a puddle just inside the door. There’s no one besides the clerk, a chubby Japanese guy in his early twenties. He is reading manga, a Japanese X-rated comic the size of San Francisco’s Yellow Pages.
I’m so happy I want to let him know what a fine place his store is. I pull out my Japanese phrase book and try to strike up a conversation. “Bad storm, no? Camp on beach. Me. Bad storm! Heh-heh-heh. Hahahahahahaha!”
He gives me a pained smile and says something I can’t understand.
“Me, American. From America.”
He lifts a dubious eyebrow.
“San Francisco,” I say, and because I am in the mood I start to sing: “I left my heart in San Francisco. High on a hill …”
The more I sing and babble the more he looks at me like a bad dream. He flips his manga, making a show of reading. I attempt a few more phrases and give up on Manga-man.
Well, bugger him. I settle cross-legged on the floor next to the news rack and slurp my bowl of instant noodles. Heck, I could sit here all night and look at magazine pictures. Who needs to talk anyway? I work my way through two bowls of noodles, two cans of foul Japanese coffee, a carton of custard, and a chocolate bar. The whole time Manga-man doesn’t budge from his counter fortress, the phone, and, no doubt, the police—panic button never out of his reach. He doesn’t even pick up his comic again. He wipes down the counter a dozen times, waiting for me to do something crazy. After an hour, I feel a twinge of guilt for torturing the poor guy. It’s not his fault the storm is bad and my Japanese is worse.
I don my wet gear and go out to face the storm. Manga-man is visibly relieved. I wander in the dark, come upon an all-night gas station, and stand under its awning. The old station attendant looks me up and down from inside his booth. When it is clear I am not a customer, he slides open the window, says something, his words drowned out by the whipping rain. He flicks the back of his hand at me, shooing. I go. All the houses and shops are shut against the storm, making the world look dead. Not a soul stirs. Heavy rain hoods even the streetlamps. Shivers set into me again.
I find it here in Japan where I least expect it: the black-hollow desperation of a runaway.
I luck onto a stone wall, five feet high, enclosing an empty lot. The gate is padlo
cked. I hoist my gear and bike over the gate. I pitch the tent behind the wall, stake it down good, and crawl inside. The wall shoulders most of the fury. A dozen yards away, the wind howls through a greenhouse, bansheeing on the loose aluminum sheets, jetting through and punching out plastic tarps. I peel off my wet clothes, then do push-ups, sit-ups, and leg lifts until I break a sweat. Things can’t get much worse than this. I fall promptly asleep, thinking at last I am ready for Vietnam.
8
Last – Gamble
On the highway downwind, the Saigon bus driver, at the first whiff of fish, announced, “Phan Thiet, the Fishsauce Capital—two more klics.”
I was nine, traveling with Uncle Long back to the town of my birth. The trip initiated my family’s second escape attempt from Communist Vietnam. The plan had been hatched half a year before, on the very night my father stumbled home, barefoot and bedraggled, from Minh Luong Prison. For months he paced the attic, fearful of recapture, poring over books and maps, ironing out every detail with my mother’s help. This morning, he guided me out the back door saying, “Don’t be afraid, son. It’ll be fine. You’re going home.”
The bus rolled into Phan Thiet. It was one of those odd Vietnamese coastal towns steeped in one trade and indecisive about the cloak it wore. In the rainy season, rich red clay swamped the province, pasty on thatched walls, runny on children’s faces. In the hot season, blistering shards of wind blasted sand into every crevice so thoroughly that old women complained it gritted their joints. This was the narrow season of transition. It had the air of paradise despite a briny tinge of decomposing fish that haunted the streets and alleys year-round. This town, after all, was famous for its fishsauce.
Catfish and Mandala Page 5
