10

Thinking back on the year 1969, all that comes to mind for me is a
swamp - a deep, sticky bog that feels as if it's going to suck off my
shoe each time I take a step. I walk through the mud, exhausted. In
front of me, behind me, I can see nothing but the endless darkness of a
swamp.
Time itself slogged along in rhythm with my faltering steps. The
people around me had gone on ahead long before, while my time and I
hung back, struggling through the mud. The world around me was on
the verge of great transformations. Death had already taken John
Coltrane who was joined now by so many others. People screamed
there'd be revolutionary changes- which always seemed to be just
ahead, at the curve in the road. But the "changes" that came were just
two-dimensional stage sets, backdrops without substance or meaning.
I trudged along through each day in its turn, rarely looking up, eyes
locked on the never-ending swamp that lay before me, planting my
right foot, raising my left, planting my left foot, raising my right,
never sure where I was, never sure I was headed in the right direction,
knowing only that I had to keep moving, one step at a time.
I turned 20, autumn gave way to winter, but in my life nothing
changed in any significant way. Unexcited, I went to my lectures,
worked three nights a week in the record shop reread The Great
Gatsby now and then, and when Sunday came I would do my washing
and write a long letter to Naoko. Sometimes I would go out with
Midori for a meal or to the zoo or to the cinema. The sale of the
Kobayashi Bookshop went as planned, and Midori and her sister
moved into a two-bedroom flat near Myogadani, a more upmarket
neighbourhood. Midori would move out when her sister got married,
and rent a flat by herself, she said. Meanwhile, she invited me to their
new place for lunch once. It was a sunny, handsome flat, and Midori
seemed to enjoy living there far more than she had above th e
Kobayashi Bookshop.
Every once in a while, Nagasawa would suggest that we go out on one
of our excursions, but I always found something else to do instead. I
just didn't want the hassle. Not that I didn't like the idea of sleeping
with girls: it was just that, when I thought about the whole process I
had to go through - drinking in town, looking for the right kind of
girls, talking to them, going to a hotel - it was all too much effort. I
had to admire Nagasawa all the more for the way he could continue
the ritual without ever getting sick and tired of it. Maybe what
Hatsumi had said to me had had some effect: I could make myself feel
far happier just thinking about Naoko than sleeping with some stupid,
anonymous girl. The sensation of Naoko's fingers bringing me to
climax in a grassy field remained vivid inside me.
I wrote to her at the beginning of December to ask if it would be all
right for me to come and visit her during the winter holidays. An
answer came from Reiko saying they would love to have me. She
explained that Naoko was having trouble writing and that she was
answering for her. I was not to take this to mean that Naoko was
feeling especially bad: there was no need for me to worry. These
things came in waves.

When the holidays came, I stuffed my things into my rucksack, put on
snow boots and set out for Kyoto. The odd doctor had been right: the
winter mountains blanketed in snow were incredibly beautiful. As
before, I slept two nights in the flat with Naoko and Reiko, and spent
three days with them doing much the same kind of things as before.
When the sun went down, Reiko would play her guitar and the three
of us would sit around talking. Instead of our picnic, we went cross-
country skiing. An hour of tramping through the woods on skis left us
breathless and sweaty. We also joined the residents and staff
shovelling snow when there was time. Doctor Miyata popped over to
our table at dinner to explain why people's middle fingers are longer
than their index fingers, while with toes it worked the other way. The
gatekeeper, Omura, talked to me again about Tokyo pork. Reiko
enjoyed the records I brought as gifts from the city. She transcribed a
few tunes and worked them out on her guitar.
Naoko was even less talkative than she had been in the autumn. When
the three of us were together, she would sit on the sofa, smiling, and
hardly say a word. Reiko seemed to be chattering away to make up for
her. "But don't worry," Naoko told me. "This is just one of those
times. It's a lot more fun for me to listen to you two than to talk
myself."
Reiko gave herself some chores that took her out of the flat so that
Naoko and I could get in bed. I kissed her neck and shoulders and
breasts, and she used her hands to bring me to climax as before.
Afterwards, holding her close, I told her how her touch had stayed
with me these two months, that I had thought of her and masturbated.
"You haven't slept with anybody else?" Naoko asked. "Not once," I
said.
"All right, then, here's something else for you to remember." She slid
down and kissed my penis, then enveloped it in her warm mouth and
ran her tongue all over it, her long, straight hair swaying over my
belly and groin with each movement of her lips until I came a second
time.
"Do you think you can remember that?" she asked.
"Of course I can," I said. "I'll always remember it."
I held her tight and slid my hand inside her panties, touching her still-
dry vagina. Naoko shook her head and pulled my hand away. We held
each other for a time, saying nothing.
"I'm thinking of getting out of the dorm when term ends and looking
for a flat," I said. "I've had it with dorm life. If I keep working part-
time I can pretty much cover my expenses. How about coming to
Tokyo to live with me, the way I suggested before?"
"Oh, Toru, thank you. I'm so happy that you would ask me to do
something like that!"
"It's not that I think there's anything wrong with this place," I said.
"It's quiet, the surroundings are perfect, and Reiko is a wonderful
person. But it's not a place to stay for a long time. It's too specialized
for a long stay. The longer you're here, I'm sure, the harder it is to
leave."
Instead of answering, Naoko turned her gaze to the outside. Beyond
the window, there was nothing to see but snow. Snow clouds hung
low and heavy in the sky, with only the smallest gap between them
and the snow-covered earth.
"Take your time, think it over," I said. "Whatever happens, I'm going
to move by the end of March. Any time you decide you want to join
me, you can come."
Naoko nodded. I wrapped my arms around her as carefully as if I had
been holding a work of art delicately fashioned from glass. She put
her arms around my neck. I was naked, and she wore only the
skimpiest white underwear. Her body was so beautiful, I could have
enjoyed looking at it all day.
"Why don't I get wet?" Naoko murmured. "That one time was the only
time it ever happened. The day of my twentieth birthday, that April.
The night you held me in your arms. What is wrong with me?"
"It's strictly psychological, I'm sure," I said. "Give it time. There's no
hurry."
"All of my problems are strictly psychological," said Naoko. "What if
I never get better? What if I can never have sex for the rest of my life?
Can you keep loving me just the same? Will hands and lips always be
enough for you? Or will you solve the sex problem by sleeping with
other girls?"
"I'm a born optimist," I said.
Naoko sat up in bed and slipped on a T-shirt. She put a flannel shirt
over this, and then climbed into her jeans. I put my clothes on, too.
"Let me think about it," said Naoko. "And you think about it, too."
"I will," I said. "And speaking of lips, what you did with them just
now was great."
She reddened slightly and gave a little smile. "Kizuki used to say that,
too."
"He and I had pretty much the same tastes and opinions," I said,
smiling.
We sat across from each other at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and
talking about the old days. She was beginning to talk more about
Kizuki. She would hesitate, and choose her words carefully. Every
now and then, the snow would fall for a while and stop. The sky never
cleared the whole three days I was there. "I think I can get back here
in March," I said as I was leaving. I gave her one last, heavily padded
hug with my winter coat on, and kissed her on the lips. "Goodbye,"
she said.

1970 - a year with a whole new sound to it - came along, and that put
an end to my teenage years. Now I could step out into a whole new
swamp. Then it was time for exams, and these I passed with relative
ease. If you have nothing else to do and spend all your time going to
lectures, it takes no special skill to get through end-of-year exams.
Some problems arose in the dorm, though. A few guys active in one of
the political factions kept their helmets and iron pipes hidden in their
rooms. They had a run-in with some of the baseball-players under the
wing of the dorm Head, as a result of which two of them were injured
and six expelled. The aftershock of the incident was felt for a long
time, spawning minor fights on an almost daily basis. The atmosphere
that hung over the dorm was oppressive, and people's nerves were on
edge. I myself was on the verge of getting knocked out by one of the
baseball-players when Nagasawa intervened and managed to smooth
things over. In any case, it was time for me to get out of there.
Once most of my exams were out of the way, I started looking for a
flat in earnest. After a week of searching, I came up with the right
place way out in the suburbs of Kichijoji. The location was not exactly
convenient, but it was a house: an independent house - a real find.
Originally a gardener's shack or some other kind of cottage, it stood
by itself in the corner of a good-sized plot of land, separated from the
main house by a large stretch of neglected garden. The landlord would
use the front gate, and I the back, which would make it possible for
me to preserve my privacy. It had one good-sized room, a little
kitchen and bathroom, and an unimaginably huge closet.

It even had a veranda facing the garden. A nice old couple were
renting the house at way below market value on condition that the
tenant was prepared to move out the following year if their grandson
decided to come to Tokyo. They assured me that I could live as I
pleased there; they wouldn't make any demands.
Nagasawa helped me with the move. He managed to borrow a van to
transfer my stuff, and, as promised, he gave me his fridge, TV, and
oversize thermos flask. He might not need them any more, but for me
they were perfect. He himself was scheduled to move out in two days,
to a flat in the Mita neighbourhood.
"I guess we won't be seeing each other for a long time," he said as he
left me, "so keep well. I'm still sure we'll run across each other in
some strange place years from now."
"I'm already looking forward to it," I said.
"And that time we switched girls, the funny-looking one was way
better."
"Right on," I said with a laugh. "But anyway, Nagasawa, take care of
Hatsumi. Good ones like her are hard to find. And she's a lot more
fragile than she looks."
"Yeah, I know," he said, nodding. "That's why I was hoping you
would take her when I was through. The two of you would make a
great couple."
"Yeah, right!" I said.
"Just kidding," said Nagasawa. "Anyway, be happy. I get the feeling a
lot of shit is going to come your way, but you're a stubborn bastard,
I'm sure you'll handle it. Mind if I give you one piece of advice?"
"Go ahead."
"Don't feel sorry for yourself," he said. "Only arseholes do that."
"I'll keep it in mind," I said. We shook hands and went our separate
ways, he to his new world, and I back to my swamp.

Three days after my move, I wrote to Naoko. I described my new
house and said how relieved I was to be away from the idiots in the
dorm and all their stupid brainstorms. Now I could start my new life
with a new frame of mind.

My window looks out on a big garden, which is used as a meeting
place by all the neighbourhood cats. I like to stretch out on the
veranda and watch them. I'm not sure how many of them get together,
but this is one big gang of cats. They sunbathe in groups. I don't think
they're too pleased to see me living here, but once when I put out an
old chunk of cheese a few of them crept over and nibbled it. They'll
probably be friends of mine before too long. There's one striped tom
cat in the bunch with half-eaten ears. It's amazing how much he looks
like my old dorm Head. I expect him to start raising the flag any day
now.
I'm kind of far from university here, but once I start my third year I
won't have too many morning lectures, so it shouldn't be too bad. It
may even be better with the time to read on the train. Now all I have
to do is find some easy work out here that I can do three or four days a
week. Then I can get back to my springwinding life.
I don't want to rush, but April is a good time of year to start new
things, and I can't help feeling that the best thing for us would be to
begin living together then. You could go back to university, too, if it
worked out well. If there's a problem with us actually living together, I
could find a flat for you in the neighbourhood. The most important
thing is for us to be always near each other. It doesn't have to be
spring, of course. If you think summer is better, that's fine by me, too.
Just let me know what you're thinking, OK?
I'm planning to put some extra time in at work for a while. To cover
my moving expenses. I'm going to need a fair amount of money for
one thing or another once I start living alone: pots and pans, dishes,
stuff like that. I'll be free in March, though, and I definitely want to
come to see you. What dates work best for you? I'll plan a trip to
Kyoto then. I look forward to seeing you and hearing your answer.

I spent the next few days buying the things I needed in the nearby
Kichijoji shopping district and started cooking simple meals for
myself at home. I bought some planks at a local timber yard and had
them cut to size so I could make a desk for myself. I thought I could
study on it and, for the time being, eat my meals there, too. I made
some shelves and got in a good selection of spices. A white cat maybe
six months old decided she liked me and started eating at my place. I
called her Seagull.
Once I had my place sorted out to some extent, I went into town and
found a temporary job as a painter's assistant. I filled two solid weeks
that way. The pay was good, but the work was murder, and the fumes
made my head spin. Every day after work I'd eat at a cheap restaurant,
wash it down with beer, go home and play with the cat, then sleep like
a dead man. No answer came from Naoko during that time.
I was in the thick of painting when Midori popped into my mind. I
hadn't been in touch with her for nearly three weeks,
I realized, and hadn't even told her I had moved. I had mentioned to
her that I was thinking of moving, and she had said, "Oh, really?" and
that was the last time we had talked.
I went to a phone box and dialled her number. The woman who
answered was probably her sister. When I gave her my name, she said
"Just a minute", but Midori never came to the phone.
Then the sister, or whoever she was, got back on the line. "Midori
says she's too furious to talk to you. You just moved and never said a
thing to her, right? Just disappeared and never told her where you
were going, right? Well, now you've got her boiling mad. And once
she gets mad, she stays that way. Like some kind of animal."
"Look, could you just put her on the phone? I can explain."
"She says she doesn't want to hear any explanations."
"Can I explain to you, then? I hate to do this to you, but could you just
listen and tell her what I said?"
"Not me! Do it yourself. What kind of man are you? It's your
responsibility, so you do it, and do it right."
It was hopeless. I thanked her and hung up. I really couldn't blame
Midori for being angry. What with all the moving and fixing up and
working for extra cash, I hadn't given her a second thought. Not even
Naoko had crossed my mind the whole time. This was nothing new
for me. Whenever I get involved in something, I shut out everything
else.
But then I began to think how I would have felt if the tables had been
turned and Midori had moved somewhere without telling me where or
getting in touch with me for three weeks. I would have been hurt -
hurt badly, no doubt. No, we weren't lovers, but in a way we had
opened ourselves to each other even more deeply than lovers do. The
thought caused me a good deal of grief. What a terrible thing it is to
wound someone you really care for - and to do it so unconsciously.
As soon as I got home from work, I sat at my new desk and wrote to
Midori. I told her how I felt as honestly as I could. I apologized,
without explanations or excuses, for having been so careless and
insensitive. I miss you, I wrote. I want to see you
as soon as possible. I want you to see my new house. Please write to
me, I said, and sent the letter special delivery.
The answer never came.
This was the beginning of one weird spring. I spent the whole holiday
waiting for letters. I couldn't take a trip, I couldn't go home to see my
parents, I couldn't even take a part-time job because there was no
telling when a letter might arrive from Naoko saying she wanted me to
come and see her on such-and-such a date. Afternoons I would spend
in the nearby shopping district in Kichijoji, watching double bills or
reading in a jazz café. I saw no one and talked to almost no one. And
once a week I would write to Naoko. I never suggested to her that I
was hoping for an answer. I didn't want to pressure her in any way. I
would tell her about my painting job, about Seagull, about the peach
blossom in the garden, about the nice old lady who sold tofu, about
the nasty old lady in the local restaurant, about the meals I was
making for myself. But still, she never wrote.
Whenever I was fed up reading or listening to records, I would work a
little in the garden. From my landlord I borrowed a rake and broom
and pruning shears and spent my time pulling weeds and trimming
bushes. It didn't take much to make the garden look good. Once the
owner invited me to join him for a cup of tea, so we sat on the veranda
of the main house drinking green tea and munching on rice crackers,
sharing small talk. After retirement, he had got a job with an insurance
company, he said, but he had left that,
too, after a couple of years, and now he was taking it easy. The house
and land had been in the family for a long time, his children were
grown-up and independent, and he could manage a comfortable old
age without working. Which is why he and his wife were always
travelling together.
"That's nice," I said.
"No it's not," he answered. "Travelling is no fun. I'd much rather be
working."
He let the garden grow wild, he said, because there were no decent
gardeners in the area and because he had developed allergies that
made it impossible for him to do the work himself. Cutting grass made
him sneeze.
When we had finished our tea, he showed me a storage shed and told
me I could use anything I found inside, more or less by way of thanks
for my gardening. "We don't have any use for any of this stuff," he
said, "so feel free."
And in fact the place was crammed with all kinds of things - an old
wooden bath, a kids' swimming pool, baseball bats. I found an old
bike, a handy-sized dining table with two chairs, a mirror, and a
guitar. "I'd like to borrow these if you don't mind," I said.
"Feel free," he said again.
I spent a day working on the bike: cleaning the rust off, oiling the
bearings, pumping up the tyres, adjusting the gears, and taking it to a
bike repair shop to have a new gear cable installed. It looked like a
different bike by the time I had finished. I cleaned a thick layer of dust
off the table and gave it a new coat of varnish. I replaced the strings of
the guitar and glued a section of the body that was coming apart. I
took a wire brush to the rust on the tuning pegs and adjusted those. It
wasn't much of a guitar, but at least I got it to stay in tune. I hadn't had
a guitar in my hands since school, I realized. I sat on the porch and
picked my way through The Drifters' "Up on the Roof" as well as I
could. I was amazed to find I still remembered most of the chords.
Next I took a few planks of wood and made myself a square letterbox.
I painted it red, wrote my name on it, and set it outside my door. Up
until 3 April, the only post that found its way to my box was
something that had been forwarded from the dorm: a notice from the
reunion committee of my school. A class reunion was the last thing I
wanted to have anything to do with. That was the class I had been in
with Kizuki. I threw it in the bin.
I found a letter in the box on the afternoon of 4 April. It said Reiko
Ishida on the back. I made a nice, clean cut across the seal with my
scissors and went out to the porch to read it. I had a feeling this was
not going to be good news, and I was right.
First Reiko apologized for making me wait so long for an answer.
Naoko had been struggling to write me a letter, she said, but she could
never seem to write one through to the end.

I offered to send you an answer in her place, but every time I pointed
out how wrong it was of her to keep you waiting, she insisted that it
was far too personal a matter, that she would write to you herself,
which is why I haven't written sooner. I'm sorry, really. I hope you can
forgive me.
I know you must have had a difficult month waiting for an answer, but
believe me, the month has been just as difficult for Naoko. Please try
to understand what she's been going through. Her condition is not
good, I have to say in all honesty. She was trying her best to stand on
her own two feet, but so far the results have not been good.
Looking back, I see now that the first symptom of her problem was
her loss of the ability to write letters. That happened around the end of
November or beginning of December. Then she started hearing things.
Whenever she would try to write a letter, she would hear people
talking to her, which made it impossible for her to write. The voices
would interfere with her attempts to choose her words. It wasn't all
that bad until about the time of your second visit, so I didn't take it too
seriously. For all of us here, these kinds of symptoms come in cycles,
more or less. In her case, they got quite serious after you left. She is
having trouble now just holding an ordinary conversation. She can't
find the right words to speak, and that puts her into a terribly confused
state - confused and frightened. Meanwhile, the "things" she's hearing
are getting worse.
We have a session every day with one of the specialists. Naoko and
the doctor and I sit around talking and trying to find the exact part of
her that's broken. I came up with the idea that it would be good to add
you to one of our sessions if possible, and the doctor was in favour of
it, but Naoko was against it. I can tell you exactly what her reason
was: "I want my body to be clean of all this when I meet him." That
was not the problem, I said to her; the problem was to get her well as
quickly as possible, and I pushed as hard as I could, but she wouldn't
change her mind.
I think I once explained to you that this is not a specialized hospital.
We do have medical specialists here, of course, and they provide
effective treatments, but concentrated therapy is another matter. The
point of this place is to create an effective environment in which the
patient can treat herself or himself, and that does not, pro perly
speaking, include medical treatment. Which means that if Naoko's
condition grows any worse, they will probably have to transfer her to
some other hospital or medical facility or what have you. Personally, I
would find this very painful, but we would have to do it. That isn't to
say that she couldn't come back here for treatment on a kind of
temporary "leave of absence". Or, better yet, she could even be cured
and finish with hospitals completely. In any case, we're doing
everything we can, and Naoko is doing everything she can. The best
thing you can do meanwhile is hope for her recovery and keep sending
her those letters.

It was dated 31 March. After I had read it, I stayed on the porch and
let my eyes wander out to the garden, full now with the freshness of
spring. An old cherry tree stood there, its blossoms nearing the height
of their glory. A soft breeze blew, and the light of day lent its
strangely blurred, smoky colours to everything. Seagull wandered
over from somewhere, and after scratching at the boards of the
veranda for a while, she stretched out next to me and fell asleep.
I knew I should be doing some serious thinking, but I had no idea how
to go about it. And, to tell the truth, thinking was the last thing I
wanted to do. The time would come soon enough when I had no
choice in the matter, and when that time came I would take a good,
long while to think things over. Not now, though. Not now.
I spent the day staring at the garden, propped against a pillar and
stroking Seagull. I felt completely drained. The
afternoon deepened, twilight approached, and bluish shadows
enveloped the garden. Seagull disappeared, but I went on staring at the
cherry blossoms. In the spring gloom, they looked like flesh that had
burst through the skin over festering wounds. The garden filled up
with the sweet, heavy stench of rotting flesh. And that's when I
thought of Naoko's flesh. Naoko's beautiful flesh lay before me in the
darkness, countless buds bursting through her skin, green and
trembling in an almost imperceptible breeze. Why did such a beautiful
body have to be so ill? I wondered. Why didn't they just leave Naoko
alone?
I went inside and drew my curtains, but even indoors there was no
escape from the smell of spring. It filled everything from the ground
up. But the only thing the smell of spring brought to mind for me now
was that putrefying stench. Shut in behind my curtains, I felt a violent
loathing for spring. I hated what the spring had in store for me; I hated
the dull, throbbing ache it aroused inside me. I had never hated
anything in my life with such intensity.
I spent three full days after that all but walking on the bottom of the
sea. I could hardly hear what people said to me, and they had just as
much trouble catching anything I had to say. My whole body felt
enveloped in some kind of membrane, cutting off any direct contact
between me and the outside world. I couldn't touch "them", and "they"
couldn't touch me. I was utterly helpless, and as long as I remained in
that state, "they" were unable to reach out to me.
I sat leaning against the wall, staring up at the ceiling. When I felt
hungry I would nibble anything within reach, drink some water, and
when the sadness of it got to me, I'd knock myself out with whisky. I
didn't bathe, I didn't shave. This is how the three days went by.
A letter came from Midori on 6 April. She invited me to meet her on
campus and have lunch on the tenth when we had to enroll for
lectures. I put off writing to you as long as I could, which makes us
even, so let's make up. I have to admit it, I miss you.
I read the letter again and again, four times all together, and still I
couldn't tell what she was trying to say to me. What could it possibly
mean? My brain was so fogged over, I couldn't find the connection
from one sentence to the next. How would meeting her on enrolment
day make us "even"? Why did she want to have "lunch" with me? I
was really losing it. My mind had gone slack, like the soggy roots of a
subterranean plant. But somehow I knew I had to snap out of it. And
then those words of Nagasawa's came to mind: "Don't feel sorry for
yourself. Only arseholes do that."
"OK, Nagasawa. Right on," I heard myself thinking. I let out a sigh
and got to my feet.
I did my laundry for the first time in weeks, went to the public bath
and shaved, cleaned my place up, shopped for food and cooked myself
a decent meal for a change, fed the starving Seagull, drank only beer,
and did 30 minutes of exercise. Shaving, I discovered in the mirror
that I was becoming emaciated. My eyes were popping. I could hardly
recognize myself.
I went out the next morning on a longish bike ride, and after finishing
lunch at home, I read Reiko's letter one more time. Then thought
seriously about what I ought to do next. The main reason I had taken
Reiko's letter so hard was that it had upset my optimistic belief that
Naoko was getting better. Naoko herself had told me, "My sickness is
a lot worse than you think: it has far deeper roots." And Reiko had
warned me there was no telling what might happen. Still, I had seen
Naoko twice, and had gained the impression she was on the

mend. I had assumed that the only problem was whether she could
regain the courage to return to the real world, and that if she managed
to, the two of us could join forces and make
a go of it.
Reiko's letter smashed the illusory castle that I had built on that fragile
hypothesis, leaving only a flattened surface devoid of feeling. I would
have to do something to regain my footing. It would probably take a
long time for Naoko to recover. And even then, she would no doubt be
more debilitated and would have lost even more of her self confidence
than ever. I would have to adapt myself to this new situation. As
strong as I might become, though, it would not solve all the problems.
I knew that much. But there was nothing else I could do: just keep my
own spirits up and wait for her to recover.
Hey, there, Kizuki, I thought. Unlike you, I've chosen to live - and to
live the best I know how. Sure, it was hard for you. What the hell, it's
hard for me. Really hard. And all because you killed yourself and left
Naoko behind. But that's something I will never do. I will never, ever,
turn my back on her. First of all, because I love her, and because I'm
stronger than she is. And I'm just going to keep on getting stronger.
I'm going to mature. I'm going to be an adult. Because that's what I
have to do. I always used to think I'd like to stay 17 or 18 if I could.
But not any more. I'm not a teenager any more. I've got a sense of
responsibility now. I'm not the same person I was when we used to
hang out together. I'm 20 now. And I have to pay the price to go on
living.

"Shit, Watanabe, what happened to you?" Midori asked. "You're all
skin and bones!"
"That bad, huh?"

"Too much you-know-what with that married girlfriend of yours, I
bet."
I smiled and shook my head. "I haven't slept with a girl since the
beginning of October."
"Whew! That can't be true. We're talking six months here!" "You
heard me."
"So how did you lose so much weight?" "By growing up," I said.
Midori put her hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eye with a
twisted scowl that soon turned into a sweet smile. "It's true," she said.
"Something's kind of different. You've changed."
"I told you, I grew up. I'm an adult now."
"You're fantastic, the way your brain works," she said as though
genuinely impressed. "Let's eat. I'm starving."
We went to a little restaurant behind the literature department. I
ordered the lunch special and she did the same. "Hey, Watanabe, are
you mad at me?" "What for?"
"For not answering you, just to get even. Do you think I shouldn't
have done that? I mean, you apologized and everything."
"Yeah, but it was my fault to begin with. That's just how it goes."
"My sister says I shouldn't have done it. That it was too unforgiving,
too childish."
"Yeah, but it made you feel better, didn't it, getting even like that?"
"Uh-huh."
"OK, then, that's that."
"You are forgiving, aren't you?" Midori said. "But tell me the truth,
Watanabe, you haven't had sex for six months?"
"Not once."
"So, that time you put me to bed, you must have really wanted it bad."
"Yeah, I guess I did."
"But you didn't do it, did you?"
"Look, you're the best friend I've got now," I said. "I don't want to lose
you."
"You know, if you had tried to force yourself on me that time, I
wouldn't have been able to resist, I was so exhausted."
"But I was too big and hard," I said.
Midori smiled and touched my wrist. "A little before that, I decided I
was going to believe in you. A hundred per cent. That's how I
managed to sleep like that with total peace of mind. I knew I'd be all
right, I'd be safe with you there. And I did sleep like a log, didn't I?"
"You sure did."
"On the other hand, if you were to say to me, "Hey, Midori, let's do it.
Then everything'll be great,' I'd probably do it with you. Now, don't
think I'm trying to seduce you or tease you. I'm just telling you what's
on my mind, with total honesty."
"I know, I know."
While we ate lunch, we showed each other our enrolment cards and
found that we had enrolled for two of the same courses. So I'd be
seeing her twice a week at least. With that out of the way, Midori told
me about her living arrangements. For a while, neither she nor her
sister could get used to living in a flat - because it was too easy, she
said. They had always been used to running around like mad every
day, taking care of sick people, helping out at the bookshop, and one
thing or another.
"We're finally getting used to it, though," she said. "This is the way we
should have been living all along - not having to worry about anyone
else's needs, just stretching out any way we felt like it. It made us both
nervous at first, as if our bodies were floating a few inches off the
ground. It didn't seem real, like real life couldn't actually be like that.
We were both tense, as though everything was about to be tipped
upside down any minute."
"A couple of worriers," I said with a smile.
"Well, it's just that life has been so cruel to us until now,"
Midori said. "But that's OK. We're going to get back every thing it
owes us."
"I bet you are," I said, "knowing you. But tell me, what's your sister
doing these days?"
"A friend of hers opened this swanky accessory shop a little while
ago. My sister helps out there three times a week. Otherwise, she's
studying cookery, going on dates with her fiancé, going to the cinema,
vegging out, and just enjoying life.
Midori then asked about my new life. I gave her a description of the
layout of the house, and the big garden and Seagull the cat, and my
landlord.
"Are you enjoying yourself?" she asked. "Pretty much," I said.
"Could have fooled me," said Midori.
"Yeah, and it's springtime, too," I said.
"And you're wearing that cool pullover your girlfriend knitted for
you."
With a sudden shock I glanced down at my wine-coloured jumper.
"How did you know?"
"You're as honest as they come," said Midori. "I'm guessing, of
course! Anyway, what's wrong with you?"
"I don't know. I'm trying to whip up a little enthusiasm." "Just
remember, life is a box of chocolates."

I shook my head a few times and looked at her. "Maybe I'm not so
smart, but sometimes I don't know what on earth you're talking
about."
"You know, they've got these chocolate assortments, and you like
some but you don't like others? And you eat all the ones you like, and
the only ones left are the ones you don't like as much? I always think
about that when something painful comes up. "Now I just have to
polish these off, and everything'll be OK.' Life is a box of chocolates."
"I suppose you could call it a philosophy."
"It's true, though. I've learned it from experience."

We were drinking our coffee when two girls came in. Midori seemed
to know them from university. The three of them compared enrolment
cards and talked about a million different things: "What kind of mark
did you get in German?" "So-and-so got hurt in the campus riots."
"Great shoes, where did you buy them?" I half-listened, but it felt as
though their comments were coming from the other side of the world.
I sipped my coffee and watched the scene passing by the shop
window. It was a typical university springtime scene as the new year
was getting under way: a haze hanging in the sky, the cherry trees
blooming, the new students (you could tell at a glance) carrying
armloads of new books. I felt myself drifting off a little and thought
about Naoko, unable to return to her studies again this year. A small
glass full of anemones stood by the window.
When the other two went back to their table, Midori and I left to walk
around the neighbourhood. We visited a few second-hand bookshops,
bought some books, went to another café for another cup, played some
pinball at an arcade, and sat on a park bench, talking - or, rather,
Midori talked while I merely grunted in response. When she said she
was thirsty, I ran over to a newsagent's and bought us two Cokes. I
came back to find her scribbling away with her ballpoint pen on some
ruled paper.
"What's that?" I asked.
"Nothing," she said.
"I have to go," she announced at 3.30. "I'm supposed to meet my sister
at the Ginza."
We walked to the subway station and went off in different directions.
As she left, Midori stuffed the piece of paper, now folded in four, into
my pocket. "Read this when you get home," she said. I read it on the
train.

I'm writing this letter to you while you're off buying drinks. This is the
first time in my life I've ever written a letter to somebody sitting next
to me on a bench, but I feel it's the only way I can get through to you.
I mean, you're hardly listening to anything I say. Am I right?
Do you realize you did something terrible to me today? You never
even noticed that my hairstyle had changed, did you? I've been
working on it forever, trying to grow it out, and finally, at the end of
last week, I managed to get it into a style you could actually call
girlish, but you never even noticed. It was looking pretty good, so I
thought I'd give you a little shock when you saw me for the first time
after so long, but it didn't even register with you. Don't you think that's
awful? I bet you can't even remember what I was wearing today. Hey,
I'm a girl! So what if you've got something on your mind? You can
spare me one decent look! All you had to say was "Cute hair", and I
would have been able to forgive you for being sunk in a million
thoughts, but no!
Which is why I'm going to tell you a lie. It's not true that I have to
meet my sister at the Ginza. I was planning to spend the night at your
place. I even brought my pyjamas with me. It's true. I've got my
pyjamas and a toothbrush in my bag. I'm such an idiot! I mean, you
never even invited me over to see your new place. Oh well, what the
hell, you obviously want to be alone, so I'll leave you alone. Go ahead
and think away to your heart's content!
But don't get me wrong. I'm not totally mad at you. I'm just sad. You
were so nice to me when I was having my problems, but now that
you're having yours, it seems there's not a thing I can do for you.
You're all locked up in that little world of yours, and when I try
knocking on the door, you just sort of look up for a second and go
right back inside.
So now I see you coming back with our drinks - walking and thinking.
I was hoping you'd trip, but you didn't. Now you're sitting next to me
drinking your Coke. I was holding out one last hope that you'd notice
and say "Hey, your hair's changed!" but no. If you had, I would have
torn up this letter and said: "Let's go to your place. I'll make you a nice
dinner. And afterwards we can go to bed and cuddle." But you're
about as sensitive as a steel plate. Goodbye.
PS. Please don't talk to me next time we meet.
I rang Midori's flat from the station when I got off the train in
Kichijoji, but there was no answer. With nothing better to do, I
ambled around the neighbourhood looking for some part-time work I
could take after lectures began. I would be free all day Saturday and
Sunday and could work after five o'clock on Mondays, Wednesdays
and Thursdays; but finding a job that fitted my particular schedule was
no easy matter. I gave up and went home. When I went out to buy
groceries for dinner, I tried Midori's place again. Her sister told me
that Midori hadn't come home yet and that she had no idea when she'd
be back. I thanked her and hung up.
After eating, I tried to write to Midori, but I gave up after several false
starts and wrote to Naoko instead.
Spring was here, I said, and the new university year was starting. I
told her I missed her, that I had been hoping, one way or another, to be
able to meet her and talk. In any case,
I wrote, I've decided to make myself strong. As far as I can tell, that's
all I can do.

There's one other thing. Maybe it's just to do with me, and you may
not care about this one way or another, but I'm not sleeping with
anybody any more. It's because I don't want to forget the last time you
touched me. It meant a lot more to me than you might think. I think
about it all of the time.

I put the letter in an envelope, stuck on a stamp, and sat at my desk a
long while staring at it. It was a much shorter letter than usual, but I
had the feeling that Naoko might understand me better that way. I
poured myself an inch-and-a-half of whisky, drank it in two swallows,
and went to sleep.

The next day I found a job near Kichijoji Station that I could do on
Saturdays and Sundays: waiting on tables at a smallish It alian
restaurant. The conditions were pretty poor, but travel
and lunch expenses were included. And whenever somebody on the
late shift took the day off on a Monday, Wednesday or Thursday
(which happened often) I could take their place. This was perfect for
me. The manager said they would raise my pay when I had stayed for
three months, and they wanted me to start that Saturday. He was a
much more decent guy than the idiot who ran the record shop in
Shinjuku.

I tried phoning Midori's flat again, and again her sister answered.
Midori hadn't come back since yesterday, she said, sounding tired, and
now she herself was beginning to worry: did I have any idea where
she might have gone? All I knew was that Midori had her pyjamas and
a toothbrush in her bag.

I saw Midori at the lecture on Wednesday. She was wearing a deep
green pullover and the dark sunglasses she had often worn that
summer. She was seated in the last row, talking with a thin girl with
glasses I had seen once before. I approached her and said I'd like to
talk afterwards. The girl with glasses looked at me first, and then
Midori looked at me. Her hairstyle was, in fact, somewhat more
feminine than it had been before: more mature.
"I have to meet someone," she said, cocking her head slightly.
"I won't take up much of your time," I said. "Five minutes."
Midori removed her sunglasses and narrowed her eyes. She might just
as well have been looking at a crumbling, abandoned house some
hundred yards in the distance.
"I don't want to talk to you. Sorry," she said.
The girl with glasses looked at me with eyes that said: She says she
doesn't want to talk to you. Sorry.
I sat at the right end of the front row for the lecture (an overview of
the works of Tennessee Williams and their place in American
literature), and when it was over, I did a long count to three and turned
around. Midori was gone.
April was too lonely a month to spend all alone. In April, everyone
around me looked happy. People would throw off their coats and
enjoy each other's company in the sunshine - talking, playing catch,
holding hands. But I was always by myself. Naoko, Midori,
Nagasawa: all of them had gone away from where I stood. Now I had
no one to say "Good morning" to or "Have a nice day". I even missed
Storm Trooper. I spent the whole month with this hopeless sense of
isolation. I tried to speak to Midori a few times, but the answer I got
from her was always the same: "I don't want to talk to you now" - and
I knew from the tone of her voice that she meant it. She was always
with the girl with glasses, or else I saw her with a tall, short-haired
guy. He had these incredibly long legs and always wore white
basketball shoes.
April ended and May came along, but May was even worse than
April. In the deepening spring of May, I had no choice b ut to
recognize the trembling of my heart. It usually happened as the sun
was going down. In the pale evening gloom, when the soft fragrance
of magnolias hung in the air, my heart would swell without warning,
and tremble, and lurch with a stab of pain. I would try clamping my
eyes shut and gritting my teeth, and wait for it to pass. And it would
pass - but slowly, taking its own time, and leaving a dull ache in its
path.
At those times I would write to Naoko. In my letters to her, I would
describe only things that were touching or pleasant or beautiful: the
fragrance of grasses, the caress of a spring breeze, the light of the
moon, a film I'd seen, a song I liked, a book that had moved me. I
myself would be comforted by
letters like this when I would reread what I had written. And I would
feel that the world I lived in was a wonderful one. I wrote any number
of letters like this, but from Naoko or Reiko I heard nothing.
At the restaurant where I worked I got to know another student my
age named Itoh. It took quite a while before this gentle, quiet student
from the oil-painting department of an art college would engage me in
conversation, but eventually we started going to a nearby bar after
work and talking about all kinds of things. He also liked to read and to
listen to music, so we'd usually talk about books and records we liked.
He was a slim, good-looking guy with much shorter hair and far
cleaner clothes than the typical art student. He never had a lot to say,
but he had his definite tastes and opinions. He liked French novels,
especially those of Georges Bataille and Boris Vian. For music, he
preferred Mozart and Ravel. And, like me, he was looking for a friend
with whom he could talk about such things.
Itoh once invited me to his flat. It was not quite as hard to get to as
mine: a strange, one-floored house behind Inokashira Park. His room
was stuffed with painting supplies and canvases. I asked to see his
work, but he said he was too embarrassed to show me anything. We
drank some Chivas Regal that he had quietly removed from his
father's place, grilled some smelts on his charcoal stove, and listened
to Robert Casadesus playing a Mozart piano concerto.
Itoh was from Nagasaki. He had a girlfriend he would sleep with
whenever he went home, he said, but things weren't going too well
with her lately.
"You know what girls are like," he said. "They turn 20 or 21 and all of
a sudden they start having these concrete ideas. They get super-
realistic. And when that happens, everything that seemed so sweet and
loveable about them begins to look ordinary and depressing. Now
when I see her, usually after we do it, she starts asking me, "What are
you going to do after you graduate?"'
"Well, what are you going to do after you graduate?" I asked him.
Munching on a mouthful of smelt, he shook his head. "What can I do?
I'm in oil painting! Start worrying about stuff like that, and nobody's
going to study oil painting! You don't do it to feed yourself. So she's
like, "Why don't you come back to Nagasaki and become an art
teacher?' She's planning to be an English teacher."
"You're not so crazy about her any more, are you?"
"That just about sums it up," Itoh admitted. "And who on earth wants
to be an art teacher? I'm not gonna spend my whole fuckin' life
teaching teenaged monkeys how to draw!"
"That's beside the point," I said. "Don't you think you ought to break
up with her? For both your sakes."
"Sure I do. But I don't know how to say it to her. She's planning to
spend her life with me. How the hell can I say, "Hey, we ought to split
up. I don't like you any more'?"
We drank our Chivas straight, without ice, and when we ran out of
smelts we cut up some cucumbers and celery and dipped them in
miso. When my teeth crunched down on my cucumber slices, I
thought of Midori's father, which reminded me how flat and tasteless
my life had become without Midori and this put me in a foul mood.
Without my being aware of it, she had become a huge presence inside
me.
"Got a girlfriend?" asked Itoh.
"Yeah," I said, then, after a pause added, "but I can't be with her at the
moment."
"But you understand each other's feelings, right?"
"I like to think so. Otherwise, what's the point?" I said with a chuckle.
Itoh talked in hushed tones about the greatness of Mozart. He knew
Mozart inside out, the way a country boy knows his mountain trails.
His father loved the music and had exposed him to it ever since he
was tiny. I didn't know so much about classical music, but listening to
this Mozart concerto with Itoh's smart and heartfelt commentary
("There - that part," "How about that?"), I felt myself calming down
for the first time in ages. We stared at the crescent moon hanging over
Inokashira Park and drank our Chivas Regal to the last drop. Fantastic
whisky.
Itoh said I could spend the night there, but I told him I had to do
something, thanked him for the whisky and left his flat before nine.
On the way back to my place I called Midori from a phone box. Much
to my surprise she actually answered.
"Sorry," she said, "but I don't want to talk to you right now."
"I know, I know. But I don't want our relationship to end like this.
You're one of the very few friends I have, and it hurts not being able
to see you. When am I going to be able to talk to you? I want you to
tell me that much, at least."
"When I feel like talking to you," she said.
"How are you?" I asked.
"Fine," she said, and hung up.

A letter came from Reiko in the middle of May.

Thanks for writing so often. Naoko enjoys your letters. And so do I.
You don't mind if I read them, do you?
Sorry I haven't been able to answer for such a long time. To tell you
the truth, I've been feeling a bit exhausted, and there hasn't been much
good news to report. Naoko's not doing well. Her mother came from
Kobe the other day. The four of us - she and Naoko and the doctor and
I - had a good, long talk and we reached the conclusion that Naoko
should move to a real hospital for a while for some intensive treatment
and then maybe come back here depending on the results. Naoko says
she'd like to stay here if possible and make herself well, and I know I
am going to miss her and worry about her, but the fact is that it's
getting harder and harder to keep her under control here. She's fine
most of the time, but sometimes her emotions become extremely
unstable, and when that happens we can't take our eyes off her.
There's no telling what she would do. When she has those intense
episodes of hearing voices, she shuts down completely and burrows
inside herself.
Which is why I myself agree that the best thing for Naoko would be
for her to receive therapy at a proper institution for a while. I hate to
say it, but it's all we can do. As I told you once before, patience is the
most important thing. We have to go on unravelling the jumbled
threads one at a time, without losing hope. No matter how hopeless
her condition may appear to be, we are bound to find that one loose
thread sooner or later. If you're in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit
tight until your eyes get used to the dark.
Naoko should have moved to that other hospital by the time you
receive this. I'm sorry I waited to tell you until the decisions had been
made, but it happened very quickly. The new hospital is a really good
one,
with good doctors. I'll write the address below: please write to Naoko
there. They will be keeping me informed of her progress, too, so I will
let you know what I hear. I hope it will be good news. I know this is
going to be hard for you, but keep your hopes up. And even though
Naoko is not here any more, please write to me once in a while.
Goodbye.

I wrote a huge number of letters that spring: one a week to Naoko,
several to Reiko, and several more to Midori. I wrote letters in the
lecture hall, I wrote letters at my desk at home with Seagull on my lap,
I wrote letters at empty tables during my bre aks at the Italian
restaurant. It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces
of my crumbling life.
To Midori I wrote: April and May were painful, lonely months for me
because I couldn't talk to you. I never knew that spring could be so
painful and lonely. Better to have three Februaries than a spring like
this. I know it's too late to be saying this, but your new hairstyle looks
great on you. Really cute. I'm working at an Italian restaurant now,
and the cook taught me a great way to make spaghetti. I'd like to make
it for you soon.

I went to the university every day, worked in the restaurant two or
three times a week, talked with Itoh about books and music, read a
few Boris Vian novels he lent me, wrote letters, played with Seagull,
made spaghetti, worked in the garden, masturbated thinking of Naoko,
and saw lots of films.
It was almost the middle of June by the time Midori started talking to
me. We hadn't said a word to each other for two months. After the end
of one lecture, she sat down next to me, propped her chin in her hand,
and sat there, saying nothing.

Beyond the window, it was raining - a really rainy-season rain,
pouring straight down without any wind, soaking every single thing
beneath. Long after the other students had filed out of the classroom,
Midori went on sitting next to me without a word. Then she took a
Marlboro from the pocket of her jeans jacket, put it between her lips,
and handed me her matches. I struck a match and lit her cigarette.
Midori pursed her lips and blew a gentle cloud of tobacco in my face.
"Like my hairstyle?" she asked.
"It's great."
"How great?"
"Great enough to knock down all the trees in all the forests of the
world."
"You really think so?"
"I really think so."
She kept her eyes on mine for a while, then held her right hand out to
me. I took it. She looked even more relieved than I felt. She tapped
her ashes onto the floor and rose to her feet.
"Let's eat. I'm starving," she said.
"Where do you want to go?" I asked.
"To the restaurant of the Takashim aya department store in
Nihonbashi."
"Why there of all places?"
"I like to go there sometimes, that's all."
And so we took the subway to Nihonbashi. The place was practically
empty, maybe because it had been raining all morning. The smell of
rain filled the big, cavernous department store, and all the employees
had that what-do-we-do-now? kind of look. Midori and I went to the
basement restaurant and, after a close inspection of the plastic food in
the window, both decided to have an old -fashioned cold lunch
assortment with rice and pickles and grilled fish and
tempura and teriyaki chicken. Inside, it was far from crowded despite
it being midday.
"God, how long has it been since I last had lunch in a department-
store restaurant?" I wondered aloud, drinking green tea from one of
those slick, white cups you only get in a department-store restaurant.
"I like to do stuff like this," said Midori. "I don't know, it makes me
feel like I'm doing something special. Probably reminds me of when I
was a kid. My parents almost never took me to department stores."
"And I get the sneaking suspicion that's all mine ever did. My mother
was crazy about them."
"Lucky you!"
"What are you talking about? I don't particularly like going to
department stores."
"No, I mean, you were lucky they cared enough about you to take you
places.'-"
"Well, I was an only child," I said.
"When I was little I used to dream about going to a department-store
restaurant all by myself when I grew up and eating anything I liked.
But what an empty dream! What's the fun of cramming your mouth
full of rice all alone in a place like this? The food's not all that great,
and it's just big and crowded and stuffy and noisy. Still, every once in
a while I think about coming here."
"I've been really lonely these past two months," I said.
"Yeah, I know. You told me in your letters," Midori said, her voice
flat. "Anyway, let's eat. That's all I can think about now."
We finished all the little fried and grilled and pickled items in the
separate compartments of our fancy lacquered half-moon lunch boxes,
drank our clear soup from lacquered bowls, and our green tea from
those white cups. Midori followed lunch with a cigarette. When she
had finished smoking, she stood up without a word and took her
umbrella. I also stood up and took mine.
"Where do you want to go now?" I asked.
"The roof, of course. That's the next stop when you've had lunch in a
department-store restaurant."
There was no one on the roof in the rain, no clerk in the pet
department, and the shutters were closed in the kiosks and the
children's rides ticket booth. We opened our umbrellas and wandered
among the soaking wet wooden horses and garden chairs and stalls. It
seemed incredible to me that there could be anywhere so devoid of
people in the middle of Tokyo. Midori said she wanted to look
through a telescope, so I put in a coin and held her umbrella over her
while she squinted through the eyepiece.
In one corner of the roof there was a covered game area with a row of
children's rides. Midori and I sat next to each other on some kind of
platform and looked at the rain.
"So talk," Midori said. "You've got something you want to say to me,
I know."
"I'm not trying to make excuses," I said, "but I was really depressed
that time. My brain was all fogged over. Nothing was registering with
me. But one thing became crystal clear to me when I couldn't see you
any more. I realized that the only way I had been able to survive until
then was having you in my life. When I lost you, the pain and
loneliness really got to me."
"Don't you have any idea how painful and lonely it's been for me
without you these past two months?"
This took me completely off guard. "No," I said. "It never occurred to
me. I thought you were angry with me and didn't want to see me."
"How can you be such an idiot? Of course I wanted to see you! I told
you how much I like you! When I like somebody I really like them. It
doesn't turn on and off for me just like that. Don't you realize at least
that much about me?"
"Well, sure, but - "
"That's why I was so mad at you! I wanted to give you a good kick up
the arse. I mean, we hadn't seen each other that whole time, and you
were so spaced out thinking about this other girl you didn't even look
at me! How could I not get angry at you? But apart from all that, I had
been feeling for a long time that it would be better for me if I kept
away from you for a while. To get things clear in my head."
"What kind of things?"
"Our relationship, of course. It was getting to the point where I
enjoyed being with you far more than being with him. I mean, don't
you think there's something weird about that? And difficult? Of course
I still like him. He's a little self-centred and narrow-minded and kind
of a fascist, but he's got a lot of good points, and he's the first man I
ever felt serious about. But you, well, you're special to me. When I'm
with you I feel something is just right. I believe in you. I like you. I
don't want to let you go. I was getting more and more confused, so I
went to him and asked him what I should do. He told me to stop
seeing you. He said if I was going to see you, I should break up with
him."
"So what did you do?"
"I broke up with him. Just like that." Midori put a Marlboro in her
mouth, shielded it with her hand as she lit up, and inhaled.
"Why?"
""Why?'!" she screamed. "Are you crazy? You know the English
subjunctive, you understand trigonometry, you can read Marx, and
you don't know the answer to something as simple as that? Why do
you even have to ask? Why do you have to make a girl say something
like this? I like you more than I like him, that's all. I wish I had fallen
in love with somebody a little more handsome, of course. But I didn't.
I fell in love with you!"
I tried to speak, but I felt the words catching in my throat.
Midori threw her cigarette into a puddle. "Will you please get that
look off your face? You're gonna make me cry. Don't worry, I know
you're in love with somebody else. I'm not expecting anything from
you. But the least you can do is give me a hug. These have been two
tough months for me."
I put up my umbrella, and we went behind the game area and held
each other close. Our bodies strained against each other, and our lips
met. The smell of the rain clung to her hair and her jeans jacket. Girls'
bodies were so soft and warm! I could feel her breasts pressing against
my chest through our clothing. How long had it been since my last
physical contact with another human being?
"The day I last saw you, that night I talked to him, and we broke up,"
Midori said.
"I love you," I said to her. "From the bottom of my heart. I don't ever
want to let you go again. But there's nothing I can do. I can't make a
move."
"Because of her?"
I nodded.
"Tell me, have you slept with her?"
"Once. A year ago."
"And you haven't seen her since then?"
"I have seen her: twice. But we didn't do anything." "Why not?
Doesn't she love you?"
"That's hard to say," I said. "It's really complicated. And
mixed up. And it's been going on for such a long time, I don't know
what's what any more. And neither does she. All I know is, I have a
sort of responsibility in all this as a human being, and I can't just turn
my back on it. At least, that's how I feel about it now. Even if she isn't
in love with me."
"Let me just tell you this, Watanabe," said Midori, pressing her cheek
against my neck. "I'm a real, live girl, with real, live blood gushing
through my veins. You're holding me in your arms and I'm telling you
that I love you. I'm ready to do anything you tell me to do. I may be a
little bit mad, but I'm a good girl, and honest, and I work hard, I'm
kind of cute, I have nice boobs, I'm a good cook, and my father left me
a trust fund. I mean, I'm a real bargain, don't you think? If you don't
take me, I'll end up going somewhere else."
"I need time," I said. "I need time to think and sort things out, and
make some decisions. I'm sorry, but that's all I can say at this point."
"Yeah, but you do love me from the bottom of your heart, right? And
you never want to let me go again, right?"
"I said it and I meant it."
Midori pulled away from me with a smile on her face. "OK, I'll wait! I
believe in you," she said. "But when you take me, you take only me.
And when you hold me in your arms, you think only about me. Is that
clear?"
"I understand exactly."
"I don't care what you do to me, but I don't want you to hurt me. I've
had enough hurt already in my life. More than enough. Now I want to
be happy."
I drew her close and kissed her on the mouth.
"Drop the damn umbrella and wrap both your arms around me - hard!"
she said.
"But we'll get soaking wet!"
"So what? I want you to stop thinking and hold me tight! I've been
waiting two whole months for this!"
I set down the umbrella and held her close in the rain. The dull rush of
tyres on the highway enveloped us like a fog. The rain fell without a
break, without a sound, soaking her hair and mine, running like tears
down our cheeks, down to her denim jacket and my yellow nylon
windcheater, spreading in dark stains.
"How about going back under the roof?" I said.
"Come to my place. There's nobody home now. We'll both catch colds
like this."
"It's true."
"It's as if we've just swum across a river," Midori said, smiling. "What
a great feeling!"
We bought a good-sized towel in the linen department and took turns
going into the bathroom to dry our hair. Then we took the subway,
with the necessary top-up tickets, to her flat in Myogadani. She let me
shower first and then she showered. Lending me a bathrobe to wear
while my clothes dried, Midori changed into a polo shirt and skirt. We
sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee.
"Tell me about yourself," Midori said.
"What about me?"
"Hmm, I don't know, what do you hate?" "Chicken and VD and
barbers who talk too much." "What else?"
"Lonely April nights and lacy telephone covers." "What else?"
I shook my head. "I can't think of anything else."
"My boyfriend - which is to say, my ex-boyfriend - had all kinds of
things he hated. Like when I wore too-short skirts, or when I smoked,
or how I got drunk too quickly, or said disgusting things, or criticized
his friends. So if there's anything about me you don't like, just tell me,
and I'll fix it if I can."
"I can't think of anything," I said after giving it some thought. "There's
nothing."
"Really?"
"I like everything you wear, and I like what you do and say and how
you walk and how you get drunk. Everything."
"You mean I'm really OK just the way I am?"
"I don't know how you could change, so you must be fine the way you
are."
"How much do you love me?" Midori asked.
"Enough to melt all the tigers in the world to butter," I said. "Far out,"
she said with a hint of satisfaction. "Will you hold me again?"
We got into her bed and held each other, kissing as the sound of the
rain filled our ears. Then we talked about everything from the
formation of the universe to our preferences in the hardness of boiled
eggs.
"I wonder what ants do on rainy days?" Midori asked.
"No idea," I said. "They're hard workers, so they probably spend the
day cleaning house or stock-taking."
"If they work so hard, why don't they evolve? They've been the same
for ever."
"I don't know," I said. "Maybe their body structure isn't suited to
evolving - compared with monkeys, say."
"Hey, Watanabe, there's a lot of stuff you don't know. I thought you
knew everything."
"It's a big world out there," I said.
"High mountains, deep oceans," Midori said. She put her hand inside
my bathrobe and took hold of my erection. Then, with a gulp, she
said, "Hey, Watanabe, joking aside, this isn't gonna work. I could
never get this big, hard thing inside me. No way."
"You're kidding," I said with a sigh.
"Yup," she said, giggling. "Don't worry. It'll be just fine. I'm sure it'll
fit. Er, mind if I have a look?"
"Feel free."
Midori burrowed under the covers and groped me all over down there,
stretching the skin of my penis, weighing my testicles in the palm of
her hand. Then she poked her head out and sighed. "I love it!" she
said. "No flattery intended! I really love it!"
"Thank you," I said with simple gratitude.
"But really, Watanabe, you don't want to do it with me, do you - until
you get all that business straightened out?"
"There's no way I don't want to do it with you," I said. "I'm going
crazy I want to do it so bad. But it just wouldn't be right."
"You're so damned stubborn! If I were you, I'd just do it - then think
about it afterwards."
"You would?"
"Only kidding," Midori said in a tiny voice. "I probably wouldn't do it,
either, if I were you. And that's what I love about you. That's what I
really really love about you."
"How much do you love me?" I asked, but she didn't answer. Instead,
she pressed against me, put her lips on my nipple and began to move
the hand that was wrapped around my penis. The first thing that
occurred to me was how different it was to the way Naoko moved her
hand. Both were gentle and wonderful, but something was different
about the way they did it, and so it felt like a totally different
experience.
"Hey, Watanabe, I bet you're thinking about that other girl."
"Not true," I lied.
"Really?"
"Really."
"Because I would really hate that."
"I can't think about anybody else," I said.
"Want to touch my breasts, or down there?" Midori asked. "Oh wow,
I'd love to, but I'd better not. If we do all those
things at once, it'll be too much for me."
Midori nodded and rustled around under the covers, pulling
her panties off and holding them against the tip of my penis. "You can
come on these," she said. "But it'll make a mess of them."
"Stop it, will you? You're gonna make me cry," said Midori, a if on
the verge of tears. "All I have to do is wash them. So don't hold back,
just let yourself come all you want. If you're worried about my
panties, buy me a new pair. Or are they going to keep you from
coming because they're mine?"
"No way," I said. "Go on then, let go."
When I was through, Midori inspected my semen. "Wow, that's a huge
amount!"
"Too much?"
"Nah, it's OK, silly. Come all you want," she said with a smile. Then
she kissed me.

In the evening, Midori did some shopping in the neighbourhood and
made dinner. We ate tempura and rice with green peas at the kitchen
table, and washed it all down with beer.
"Eat a lot and make lots of semen," Midori said. "Then I'll be nice and
help you get rid of it."
"Thanks very much," I said.
"I know all sorts of ways to do it. I learned from the women's
magazines when we had the bookshop. Once they had this special
edition all about how to take care of your husband so he won't cheat
on you while you're pregnant and can't have sex. There's tons of ways.
Wanna try 'em?"
"I can hardly wait," I said.
After saying goodbye to Midori, I bought a newspaper at the station,
but when I opened it on the train, I realized I had absolutely no desire
to read a paper and in fact couldn't understand what it said. All I could
do was glare at the incomprehensible page of print and wonder what
was going to happen to me from now on, and how the things around
me would be changing. I felt as if the world was pulsating every now
and then. I sighed deeply and closed my eyes. As regards what I had
done that day, I felt not the slightest regret; I knew for certain that if I
had to do it all over again, I would live this day in exactly the same
way. I would hold Midori tight on the roof in the rain; I would get
soaking wet with her; and I would let her fingers bring me to climax in
her bed. I had no doubts about those things. I loved Midori, and I was
happy that she had come back to me. The two of us could make it, that
was certain. As Midori herself had said, she was a real, live girl with
blood in her veins, and she was putting her warm body in my arms. It
had been all I could do to suppress the intense desire I had to strip her
naked, throw open her body, and sink myself in her warmth. There
was no way I could have made myself stop her once she was holding
my penis and moving her hand. I wanted her to do it, she wanted to do
it, and we were in love. Who could have stopped such a thing? It was
true: I loved Midori. And I had probably known as much for a while. I
had just been avoiding the conclusion for a very long time.
The problem was that I could never explain these developments to
Naoko. It would have been hard enough at any point, but with Naoko
in her present condition, there was no way I could tell her I had fallen
in love with another girl. And besides, I still loved Naoko. As twisted
as that love might be, I did love her. Somewhere inside me there was
still preserved a broad, open space, untouched, for Naoko and no one
else.
One thing I could do was write a letter to Reiko that confessed
everything with total honesty. At home, I sat on the veranda, watching
the rain pour down on the garden at night, and assembling phrases in
my head. Then I went to my desk and wrote the letter. It is almost
unbearable to me that I now have to write a letter like this to you, I
began. I summarized my relationship with Midori and explained what
had happened that day.

I have always loved Naoko, and I still love her. But there is a decisive
finality to what exists between Midori and me. It has an irresistible
power that is bound to sweep me into the future. What I feel for
Naoko is a tremendously quiet and gentle and transparent love, but
what I feel for Midori is a wholly different emotion. It stands and
walks on its own, living and breathing and throbbing and shaking me
to the roots of my being. I don't know what to do. I'm confused. I'm
not trying to make excuses for myself, but I do believe that I have
lived as sincerely as I know how. I have never lied to anyone, and I
have taken care over the years not to hurt other people. And yet I find
myself tossed into this labyrinth. How can this be? I can't explain it. I
don't know what I should do. Can you tell me, Reiko? You're the only
one I can turn to for advice.

I posted the letter that night by special delivery.

Reiko's answer came five days later, dated 17 June.

Let me start with the good news. Naoko has been improving far more
rapidly than anyone could have expected. I talked to her once on the
phone, and she spoke with real lucidity. She may even be able to come
back here before long.
Now, about you.
I think you take everything too seriously. Loving another person is a
wonderful thing, and if that love is sincere, no one ends up tossed into
a labyrinth. You have to have more faith in yourself.
My advice to you is very simple. First of all, if you are drawn so
strongly to this Midori person, it is only natural for you to have fallen
in love with her. It might go well, or it might not. But love is like that.
When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it.
That's what I think. It's just a form of sincerity.
Second, as to whether or not you should have sex with Midori, that is
for you to work out. I can't say a thing. Talk it over with Midori and
reach your own conclusion, one that makes sense to you.
Third, don't tell any of this to Naoko. If things should develop to the
point where you absolutely have to tell her, then you and I will come
up with a good plan together. So now, just keep it quiet. Leave it to
me.
The fourth thing I have to say is that you have been such a great
source of strength for Naoko that even if you no longer have the
feelings of a lover towards her, there is still a lot you can do for her.
So don't brood over everything in that super-serious way of yours. All
of us (by which I mean all of us, both normal and not-so-normal) are
imperfect human beings living in an imperfect world. We don't live
with the mechanical precision of a bank account or by measuring all
our lines and angles with rulers and protractors. Am I right?
My own personal feeling is that Midori sounds like a great girl. I
understand just reading your letter why you would be drawn to her.
And I understand, too, why you would also be drawn to Naoko.
There's nothing the least bit sinful about it. Things like that happen all
the time in this great big world of ours. It's like taking a boat out on a
beautiful lake on a beautiful day and thinking both the sky and the
lake are beautiful. So stop eating yourself up. Things will go where
they're supposed to go if you just let them take their natural course.
Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for
them to be hurt. Life is like that. I know I sound like I'm preaching
from a pulpit, but it's about time you learned to live like this. You try
too hard to make life fit your way of doing things. If you don't want to
spend time in an insane asylum, you have to open up a little more and
let yourself go with life's natural flow. I'm just a powerless and
imperfect woman, but still there are times when I think to myself how
wonderful life can be! Believe me, it's true! So stop what you're doing
this minute and get happy. Work at making yourself happy!
Needless to say, I do feel sorry that you and Naoko could not see
things through to a happy ending. But who can say what's best? That's
why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where
you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My
experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such
chances in a lifetime, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of
our lives.
I'm playing the guitar every day for no one in particular. It seems a bit
pointless. I don't like dark, rainy nights, either. I hope I'll have another
chance to play my guitar and eat grapes with you and Naoko in the
room with me.
Ah, well, until then -
Reiko Ishida






Reiko wrote to me several times after Naoko's death. It wasn't my
fault, she said. It was nobody's fault, any more than you could blame
someone for the rain. But I never answered her. What could I have
said? What good would it have done? Naoko no longer existed in this
world; she had become a handful of ashes.
They held a quiet funeral for Naoko in Kobe at the end of August, and
when it was over, I went back to Tokyo. I told my landlord I would be
away for a while and my boss at the Italian restaurant that I wouldn't
be coming in to work. To Midori I wrote a short note: I couldn't say
anything just yet, but I hoped she would wait for me a little longer. I
spent the next three days in cinemas, and after I had seen every new
film in Tokyo, I packed my rucksack, took out all my savings from the
bank, went to Shinjuku Station, and got the first express train I could
find going out of town.
Where I went on my travels, it's impossible for me to recall. I
remember the sights and sounds and smells clearly enough, but the
names of the towns are gone, as well as any sense of the order in
which I travelled from place to place. I would move from town to
town by train or bus or hitching a lift in a lorry, spreading out my
sleeping bag in empty car parks or stations or parks or on river banks
or the seashore. I once persuaded them to let me sleep in the corner of
a local police station, and another time slept alongside a graveyard. I
didn't care where I slept, provided I was out of people's way and could
stay in my sleeping bag as long as I felt like it. Exhausted from
walking, I would crawl into it, gulp down some cheap whisky, and fall
fast asleep. In nice towns, people would bring me food and mosquito
coils, and in not-so-nice towns, people would call the police and have
me chased out of the parks. It made no difference to me one way or
another. All I wanted was to put myself to sleep in towns I didn't
know.
When I ran low on money, I would work as a labourer for a few days
until I had what I needed. There was always work for me to do. I just
kept moving from one town to the next, no destination in mind. The
world was big and full of weird things and strange people. One time I
called Midori because I had to hear her voice.
"Term started a long time ago, you know," she said. "Some courses
are even asking for papers already. What are you going to do? Do you
realize you've been out of touch for three whole weeks now? Where
are you? What are you doing?"
"Sorry, but I can't go back to Tokyo yet. Not yet."
"And that's all you're going to tell me?"
"There's really nothing more I can say at this point. Maybe in October.
.."
Midori hung up without a word.
I went on with my travels. Every now and then I'd stay at a dosshouse
and have a bath and shave. What I saw in the mirror looked terrible.
The sun had dried out my skin, my eyes were sunken, and odd stains
and cuts marked my cheekbones. I looked as if I had just crawled out
of a cave somewhere, but it was me after all. It was me.
By that time, I was moving down the coast, as far from Tokyo as I
could get - maybe in Tottori or the hidden side of Hyogo. Walking
along the seashore was easy. I could always find a comfortable place
to sleep in the sand. I'd make a fire from driftwood and roast some
dried fish I bought from a local fisherman. Then I'd swallow some
whisky and listen to the waves while I thought about Naoko. It was
too strange to think that she was dead and no longer part of this world.
I couldn't absorb the truth of it. I couldn't believe it. I had heard the
nails being driven into the lid of her coffin, but I still couldn't adjust to
the fact that she had returned to nothingness.
No, the image of her was still too vivid in my memory. I could still
see her enclosing my penis in her mouth, her hair falling across my
belly. I could still feel her warmth, her breath against me, and that
helpless moment when I could do nothing but come. I could bring all
this back as clearly as if it had happened only five minutes ago, and I
felt sure that Naoko was still beside me, that I could just reach out and
touch her. But no, she wasn't there; her flesh no longer existed in this
world.
Nights when it was impossible for me to sleep, images of Naoko
would come back to me. There was no way I could stop them. Too
many memories of her were crammed inside me, and as soon as one of
them found the slightest opening, the rest would force their way out in
an endless stream, an unstoppable flood: Naoko in her yellow raincape
cleaning the aviary and carrying the feed bag that rainy morning; the
caved-in birthday cake and the feel of Naoko's tears soaking through
my shirt (yes, it had been raining then, too); Naoko walking beside me
in winter wearing her camel-hair coat; Naoko touching the hairslide
she always wore; Naoko peering at me with those incredibly clear
eyes of hers; Naoko sitting on the sofa, legs drawn up beneath her blue
nightdress, chin resting on her knees.
The memories would slam against me like the waves of an incoming
tide, sweeping my body along to some strange new place- a place
where I lived with the dead. There Naoko lived, and I could speak
with her and hold her in my arms. Death in that place was not a
decisive element that brought life to an end. There, death was but one
of many elements comprising life. There Naoko lived with death
inside her. And to me she said, "Don't worry, it's only death. Don't let
it bother you."
I felt no sadness in that strange place. Death was death, and Naoko
was Naoko. "What's the problem?" she asked me with a bashful smile,
"I'm here, aren't I?" Her familiar little gestures soothed my heart like a
healing balm. "If this is death," I thought to myself, "then death is not
so bad." "It's true," said Naoko, "death is nothing much. It's just death.
Things are so easy for me here." Naoko spoketo me in the spaces
between the crashing of the dark waves.
Eventually, though, the tide would pull back, and I would be left on
the beach alone. Powerless, I could go nowhere; sadness itself would
envelop me in deep darkness until the tears came. I felt less that I was
crying than that the tears were simply oozing out of me like
perspiration.
I had learned one thing from Kizuki's death, and I believed that I had
made it a part of myself in the form of a philosophy: "Death exists, not
as the opposite but as a part of life."
By living our lives, we nurture death. True as this might be, it was
only one of the truths we had to learn. What I learned from Naoko's
death was this: no truth can cure the sadness we feel from losing a
loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness, can cure
that sorrow. All we can do is see that sadness through to the end and
learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing
the next sadness that comes to us without warning. Hearing the waves
at night, listening to the sound of the wind, day after day I focused on
these thoughts of mine. Knapsack on my back, sand in my hair, I
moved farther and farther west, surviving on a diet of whisky, bread
and water.

One windy evening, as I lay wrapped in my sleeping bag, weeping, by
the side of an abandoned hulk, a young fisherman passed by and
offered me a cigarette. I accepted it and had my first smoke in over a
year. He asked why I was crying, and almost by reflex I told him that
my mother had died. I couldn't take the sadness, I said, and so I was
on the road. He expressed his deep sympathy and brought a big bottle
of sake and two glasses from his house.
The wind tore along the sand beach as we sat there drinking. He told
me that he had lost his mother when he was 16. Never healthy, she
had worn herself out working from morning to night. I half-listened to
him, sipping my sake and grunting in response every now and then. I
felt as if I were hearing a story from some far-off world. What the hell
was he talking about? I wondered, and all of a sudden I was filled with
intense rage: I wanted to strangle him. Who gives a shit about your
mother? I've lost Naoko! Her beautiful flesh has vanished from this
world! Why the hell are you telling me about your fucking mother?!
But my rage disappeared as quickly as it had flared up. I closed my
eyes and went on half-listening to the fisherman's endless talk.
Eventually he asked me if I had eaten. No, I said, but in my rucksack I
had bread and cheese, a tomato and a piece of chocolate. What had I
eaten for lunch? he asked.
Bread and cheese, tomato and chocolate, I answered. "Wait here," he
said and ran off. I tried to stop him, but he disappeared into the
darkness without looking back.
All I could do was go on drinking my sake. The shore was littered
with paper flecks from fireworks that had been exploded on the sand,
and waves crashed against the beach with a mad roar. A scrawny dog
came up wagging its tail and sniffing around my little campfire for
something to eat but eventually gave up and wandered away.
The young fisherman came back half an hour later with two boxes of
sushi and a new bottle of sake. I should eat the top box straight away
because that had fish in it, he said, but the bottom box had only nori
rolls and deep-fried tofu skins so they would last all tomorrow. He
filled both our glasses with sake from the new bottle. I thanked him
and polished off the whole top box myself, though it had more than
enough for two. After we had drunk as much sake as we could
manage, he offered to put me up for the night, but when I said I would
rather sleep alone on the beach, he left it at that. As he stood to go, he
took a folded ?5,000 note from his pocket and shoved it into the
pocket of my shirt. "Here," he said, "get yourself some healthy food.
You look awful." I said he had done more than enough for me and that
I couldn't accept money on top of everything else, but he refused to
take it back. "It's not money," he said, "it's my feelings. Don't think
about it too much, just take it." All I could do was thank him and
accept it.
When he had gone, I suddenly thought about my old girlfriend, the
one I had first slept with in my last year of school. Chills ran through
me as I realized how badly I had treated her. I had hardly ever thought
about her thoughts or feelings or the pain I had caused her. She was
such a sweet and gentle thing, but at the time I had taken her
sweetness for granted and later hardly gave her a second thought.
What was she doing now? I wondered. And had she forgiven me?
A wave of nausea came over me, and I vomited by the old ship. My
head hurt from too much sake, and I felt bad about having lied to the
fisherman and taken his money. It was time for me to go back to
Tokyo, I decided; I couldn't keep this up for ever. I stuffed my
sleeping bag into my rucksack, slipped my arms through the straps
and walked to the local railway station. I told the man at the ticket-
office window that I wanted to get to Tokyo as soon as possible. He
checked his timetable and said I could make it as far as Osaka by
morning if I transferred from one night train to another, then I could
take the bullet train from there. I thanked him and used the x"5,000
note the fisherman gave me to buy a ticket to Tokyo. Waiting for the
train, I bought a newspaper and checked the date: 2 October, 1970. So
I had been travelling for a full month. I knew I had to go back to the
real world.
The month of travelling neither lifted my spirits nor softened the blow
of Naoko's death. I arrived back in Tokyo in pretty much the same
state in which I had left. I couldn't even bring myself to phone Midori.
What could I say to her? How could I begin? "It's all over now; you
and I can be happy together"? No, that was out of the question.
However I might phrase it, though, the facts were the same: Naoko
was dead, and Midori was still here. Naoko was a mound of white ash,
and Midori was a living, breathing human being.
I was overcome with a sense of my own defilement. Though I
returned to Tokyo I did nothing for days but shut myself up in my
room. My memory remained fixed on the dead rather than the living.
The rooms I had set aside in there for Naoko were shuttered, the
furniture draped in white, the windowsills dusty. I spent the better part
of each day in those rooms. And I thought about Kizuki. "So you
finally made Naoko yours," I heard myself telling him. "Oh, well, she
was yours to begin with. Now, maybe, she's where she belongs. But in
this world, in this imperfect world of the living, I did the best I could
for Naoko. I tried to establish a new life for the two of us. But forget
it, Kizuki. I'm giving her to you. You're the one she chose, after all. In
woods as dark as the depths of her own heart, she hanged herself.
Once upon a time, you dragged a part of me into the world of the
dead, and now Naoko has dragged another part of me into that world.
Sometimes I feel like the caretaker of a museum - a huge, empty
museum where no one ever comes, and I'm watching over it for no
one but myself."

The fourth day after my return to Tokyo, a letter came from Reiko.
Special delivery. It was a simple note: I haven't been able
to get in touch with you for weeks, and I'm worried. Please call me. At
9 a.m. and 9 p.m. I will be waiting by the telephone.
I called her at nine o'clock that night. Reiko picked up after one ring.
"Are you OK?" she asked.
"More or less," I said.
"Do you mind if I come and visit you the day after tomorrow?"
"Visit me? You mean here in Tokyo?"
"That's exactly what I mean. I want to have a good, long talk with
you."
"You're leaving the sanatorium?"
"It's the only way I can come and see you, isn't it? Anyway, it's about
time for me to get out of this place. I've been here eight years, after all.
If they keep me any longer, I'll start to rot."
I found it difficult to speak. After a short silence, Reiko went on: "I'll
be on the 3.20 bullet train the day after tomorrow. Will you meet me
at the station? Do you still remember what I look like? Or have you
lost interest in me now that Naoko's dead?"
"No way," I said. "See you at Tokyo Station the day after tomorrow at
3.20."
"You won't have any trouble recognizing me. I'm the old lady with the
guitar case. There aren't many of those."

And in fact, I had no trouble finding Reiko in the crowd. She wore a
man's tweed jacket, white trousers, and red trainers. Her hair was as
short as ever, with the usual clumps sticking up. In her right hand she
held a brown leather suitcase, and in her left a black guitar case. She
gave me a big, wrinkly smile the moment she spotted me, and I found
myself grinning back. I took her suitcase and walked beside her to the
train for the western suburbs.
"Hey, Watanabe, how long have you been wearing that awful face? Or
is that the 'in' look in Tokyo these days?"
"I was travelling for a while, ate junk all the time," I said. "How did
you find the bullet train?"
"Awful!" she said. "You can't open the windows. I wanted to buy a
box lunch from one of the station buffets."
"They sell them on board, you know."
"Yeah, overpriced plastic sandwiches. A starving horse wouldn't touch
that stuff. I always used to enjoy the boxed lunches at Gotenba
Station."
"Once upon a time, before the bullet train."
"Well, I'm from once upon a time before the bullet train!"
On the train out to Kichijoji, Reiko watched the Musashino landscape
passing the window with all the curiosity of a tourist.
"Has it changed much in eight years?" I asked.
"You don't know what I'm feeling now, do you, Watanabe?" "No, I
don't."
"I'm scared," she said. "So scared, I could go crazy just like that. I
don't know what I'm supposed to do, flung out here all by myself."
She paused. "But 'Go crazy just like that.' Kind of a cool expression,
don't you think?"
I smiled and took her hand. "Don't worry," I said. "You'll be OK. Your
own strength got you this far."
"It wasn't my own strength that got me out of that place," Reiko said.
"It was Naoko and you. I couldn't stand it there without Naoko, and I
had to come to Tokyo to talk to you. That's all. If nothing had
happened I probably would have spent the rest of my life there."
I nodded.
"What are you planning to do from now on?" I asked Reiko.
"I'm going to Asahikawa," she said. "Way up in the wilds of
Hokkaido! An old college friend of mine runs a music school there,
and she's been asking me for two or three years now to help her out. I
told her it was too cold for me. I mean, I finally get my freedom back
and I'm supposed to go to Asahikawa? It's hard to get excited about a
place like that - some hole in the ground."
"It's not so awful," I said, laughing. "I've been there. It's not a bad little
town. Got its own special atmosphere." "Are you sure?"
"Absolutely. It's much better than staying in Tokyo."
"Oh, well," she said. "I don't have anywhere else to go, and I've
already sent my stuff there. Hey, Watanabe, promise me you'll come
and visit me in Asahikawa."
"Of course I will. But do you have to leave straight away?
Can't you stay in Tokyo for a while?"
"I'd like to hang around here a few days if I can. Can you put me up? I
won't get in your way."
"No problem," I said. "I have a big closet I can sleep in, in
my sleeping bag."
"I can't do that to you."
"No, really. It's a huge closet."
Reiko tapped out a rhythm on the guitar case between her legs. "I'm
probably going to have to condition myself a little before I go to
Asahikawa. I'm just not used to being in the outside world. There's a
lot of stuff I don't get, and I'm nervous. Think you can help me out a
little? You're the only one I can ask."
"I'll do anything I can to help you," I said.
"I hope I'm not getting in your way," she said. "I don't have any way
for you to get in," I said.
She looked at me and turned up the corners of her mouth in a smile
but said nothing.

We hardly talked the rest of the way to Kichijoji Station or on the bus
back to my place. We traded a few random comments on the changes
in Tokyo and Reiko's time at the College of Music and my one trip to
Asahikawa, but said nothing about Naoko. Ten months had gone by
since I last saw Reiko, but walking by her side I felt strangely calmed
and comforted. This was a familiar feeling, I thought, and then it
occurred to me it was the way I used to feel when walking the streets
of Tokyo with Naoko. And just as Naoko and I had shared the dead
Kizuki, Reiko and I shared the dead Naoko. This thought made it
impossible for me to go on talking. Reiko continued speaking for a
while, but when she realized that I wasn't saying anything, she also
fell silent. Neither of us said a word on the bus.
It was one of those early autumn afternoons when the light is sharp
and clear, exactly as it had been a year earlier when I visited Naoko in
Kyoto. The clouds were white and as narrow as bones, the sky wide
open and high. The fragrance of the breeze, the tone of the light, the
tiny flowers in the grass, the subtle reverberations that accompanied
sounds: all these told me that autumn had come again, increasing the
distance between me and the dead with each cycle of the seasons.
Kizuki was still 17 and Naoko 21: for ever.

"Oh, what a relief to come to a place like this!" Reiko said, looking all
around as we stepped off the bus.
"Because there's nothing here," I said.
As I led her through the back gate through the garden to my cottage,
Reiko was impressed by everything she saw.
"This is terrific!" she said. "You made these shelves and the desk?"
"Yep," I said, pouring tea.
"You're obviously good with your hands. And you keep the place so
clean!"
"Storm Trooper's influence," I said. "He turned me into a cleanliness
freak. Not that my landlord's complaining."
"Oh, your landlord! I ought to introduce myself to him.
That's his place on the other side of the garden, I suppose." "Introduce
yourself to him? What for?"
"What do you mean "what for'? Some weird old lady shows up in your
place and starts playing the guitar, he's going to wonder what's going
on. Better to start out on the right foot. I even brought a box of tea
sweets for him." "Very clever," I said.
"The wisdom that comes with age. I'm going to tell him I'm your aunt
on your mother's side, visiting from Kyoto, so don't contradict me.
The age difference comes in handy at times like this. Nobody's going
to get suspicious."
Reiko took the box of sweets from her bag and went off to pay her
respects. I sat on the veranda, drinking another cup of tea and playing
with the cat. Twenty minutes went by, and when Reiko finally came
back, she pulled a tin of rice crackers from her bag and said it was a
present for me.
"What were you talking about for so long?" I asked, munching on a
cracker.
"You, of course," said Reiko, cradling the cat and rubbing her cheek
against it. "He says you're a very proper young man, a serious
student."
"Are you sure he was talking about me?"
"There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that he was talking about
you," she said with a laugh. Then, noticing my guitar, she picked it up,
adjusted the tuning, and played Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Desafinado".
It had been months since I last heard Reiko's guitar, and it gave me
that old, warm feeling.
"You practising the guitar?" she asked.
"It was kicking around the landlord's storehouse, so I borrowed it and
I plunk on it once in a while. That's all."
"I'll give you a lesson later. Absolutely free." Reiko put down the
guitar and took off her tweed jacket. Sitting against the veranda post,
she smoked a cigarette. She was wearing a madras check short-sleeve
shirt.
"Nice shirt, don't you think?" she asked.
"It is," I said. In fact it was a good-looking shirt with a handsome
pattern.
"It's Naoko's," said Reiko. "I bet you didn't know we were the same
size. Especially when she first came to the sanatorium. She put on a
little weight after that, but still we were pretty much the same size:
blouses, trousers, shoes, hats. Bras were about the only thing we
couldn't share. I've got practically nothing here. So we were always
swapping clothes. Actually, it was more like joint ownership."
Now that she mentioned it, I saw that Reiko's build was almost
identical to Naoko's. Because of the shape of her face and her thin
arms and legs, she had always given me the impression of being
smaller and slimmer than Naoko, but in fact she was surprisingly
solid.
"The jacket and trousers are hers, too," said Reiko. "It's all hers. Does
it bother you to see me wearing her stuff?"
"Not at all," I said. "I'm sure Naoko would be glad to have somebody
wearing her clothes - especially you."
"It's strange," Reiko said with a little snap of the fingers. "Naoko
didn't leave a will or anything - except where her clothes were
concerned. She scribbled one line on a memo pad on her desk. "Please
give all my clothes to Reiko.' She was a funny one, don't you think?
Why would she be concerned about her clothes of all things when
she's getting ready to die? Who gives a damn about clothes? She must
have had tons of other things she wanted to say."
"Maybe not," I said.
Puffing on her cigarette, Reiko seemed lost in thought. Then she said,
"You want to hear the whole story, in order, I suppose."
"I do," I said. "Please tell me everything."

"Tests at the hospital in Osaka showed that Naoko's condition was
improving for the moment but that she should stay there on a
somewhat longer-term basis so that they could
continue the intensive therapy for its future benefits. I told you that
much in my letter - the one I sent you somewhere around the tenth of
August."
"Right. I read that letter."
"Well, on the 24th of August I got a call from Naoko's mother asking
if it was OK for Naoko to visit me at the sanatorium. Naoko wanted to
pack the things she had left with me and, because she wouldn't be able
to see me for a while, she wanted to have a nice long talk with me, and
perhaps spend a night in our flat. I said that would be fine. I wanted to
see her really badly and to have a talk with her. So Naoko and her
mother arrived the next day, the 25th, in a taxi. The three of us worked
together, packing Naoko's things and chatting away. Late in the
afternoon, Naoko said it would be OK for her mother to go home, that
she'd be fine, so they called a taxi and the mother left. We weren't
worried at all because Naoko seemed to be in such good spirits. In
fact, until then I had been very worried. I had been expecting her to be
depressed and worn out and emaciated. I mean, I knew how much the
testing and therapy and stuff they do at those hospitals can take it out
of you, so I had some real doubts about this visit. But one look at her
was all it took to convince me she'd be OK. She looked a lot healthier
than I had expected and she was smiling and joking and talking much
more normally than when I had seen her last. She had been to the
hairdresser's and was showing off her new hairdo. So I thought there
would be nothing to worry about even if her mother left us alone.
Naoko told me that this time she was going to let those hospital
doctors cure her once and for all, and I said that that would probably
be the best thing to do. So then the two of us went out for a walk,
talking all the time, mainly about the future. Naoko told me that what
she'd really like was for the two of us to get out of the sanatorium and
live together somewhere."
"Live together? You and Naoko?"
"That's right," said Reiko with a little shrug. "So I told her it sounded
good to me, but what about Watanabe? And she said, "Don't worry,
I'll get everything straight with him.' That's all. Then she talked about
where she and I would live and what we'd do, that kind of thing. After
that we went to the aviary and played with the birds."
I took a beer from the fridge and opened it. Reiko lit another cigarette,
the cat sound asleep in her lap.
"That girl had everything worked out for herself. I'm sure that's why
she was so full of energy and smiling and healthylooking. It must have
been such a load off her mind to feel she knew exactly what she was
going to do. So then we finished going through her stuff and throwing
what she didn't need into the metal drum in the garden and burning it:
the notebook she had used as a diary, and all the letters she had
received. Your letters, too. This seemed a bit strange to me, so I asked
her why she was burning stuff like that. I mean, she had always been
so careful about putting your letters away in a safe place and reading
them over and over. She said, "I'm getting rid of everything from the
past so I can be reborn in the future.' I suppose I pretty much took her
at her word. It had its own kind of logic to it, sort of. I remember
thinking how much I wanted her to get healthy and happy. She was so
sweet and lovely that day: I wish you could have seen her!
"When that was over, we went to the dining hall for supper the way
we used to. Then we bathed and I opened a bottle of good wine that I
had been keeping for a special occasion like this and we drank and I
played the guitar. The Beatles, as alw ays, "Norwegian Wood",
"Michelle", her favourites. Both of us were feeling pretty good. We
turned out the lights, got undressed and lay in our beds. It was one of
those steaming hot nights. We had the windows wide open, but there
was hardly a breath of win d. It was black as ink outside, the
grasshoppers were screaming, and the smell of the summer grass was
so thick in the room it was hard to breathe. All of a sudden, Naoko
started talking about you - about the night she had sex with you. In
incredible detail. How you took her clothes off, how you touched her,
how she found herself getting wet, how you went inside her, how
wonderful it felt: she told me all of this in vivid detail. So I asked her:
why are you telling me this now, all of a sudden? I mean, up to then,
she had never spoken openly to me about sex. Of course, we had had
some frank sexual talk as a kind of therapy, but she had been too
embarrassed to go into details. Now I couldn't stop her. I was shocked.
"So she says, "I don't know, I just feel like talking about it. I'll stop if
you'd rather not hear it.' "No,' I said, that's OK. "If there's something
you need to talk about, you'd better get it all out. I'll listen to anything
you have to say.'
"So she went on with her story: "When he went inside me, I couldn't
believe how much it hurt. It was my first time, after all. I was so wet,
he slipped right in, but still, my brain fogged over - it hurt so much.
He put it in as far as he could, I thought, but then he lifted my legs and
went in even farther. That sent chills all through my body, as if I was
soaking in ice water. My arms and legs went numb, and a wave of
cold went through me. I didn't know what was happening. I thought I
might die right there and then, and I didn't care one way or another.
But he realized I was in pain, so he stopped moving, and still deep
inside me, he started kissing me all over - my hair, my neck, my
breasts - for a long, long time. Little by little, the warmth returned to
my body, and then, very slowly, he started to move. Oh, Reiko, it was
so wonderful! Now it felt as if my brain was just going to melt away. I
wanted to stay like that forever, to stay in his arms for the rest of my
life. That's how great it was.'
"So I said to her, "If it was so great, why didn't you just stay with
Watanabe and keep doing it every day?' But she said, "No, Reiko, I
knew it would never happen again. I knew this was something that
would come to me once, and leave, and never come back. This would
be a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I had never felt anything like it before,
and I've never felt anything like it since. I've never felt that I wanted to
do it again, and I've never grown wet like that again.'
"Of course, I explained to her that this was something that often
happened to young women and that, in most cases, it cures itself with
age. And, after all, it had worked that one time: there was no need to
worry it wouldn't happen again. I myself had had all kinds of trouble
when I was first married.
"But she said, "No, that's not it, Reiko. I'm not worried about that at
all. I just don't want anybody going inside me again. I just don't want
to be violated like that again - by anybody'."
I drank my beer, and Reiko finished her second cigarette. The cat
stretched itself in Reiko's lap, found a new position and went back to
sleep. Reiko seemed at a loss how to go on until she had lit her third
cigarette.
"After that, Naoko began to sob. I sat on the edge of her bed and
stroked her hair. "Don't worry,' I said, "everything is going to be all
right. A beautiful, young girl like you has got to have a man to hold
her and make her happy.' Naoko was drenched in sweat and tears. I
got a bath towel and dried her face and body. Even her panties were
soaked, so I helped her out of
them - now wait a minute, don't get any strange ideas, there was
nothing funny going on. We always used to bathe together. She was
like my little sister."
"I know, I know," I said.
"Well, anyway, Naoko said she wanted me to hold her. I said it was
far too hot for holding, but she said it was the last time we'd be seeing
each other, so I held her. Just for a while. With a bath towel between
us so our sweaty bodies wouldn't stick to each other. And when she
calmed down, I dried her off again, got her nightdress on her and put
her to bed. She fell sound asleep straight away. Or maybe she was just
pretending to sleep. Whatever, she looked so sweet and lovely that
night, she had the face of a girl of 13 or 14 who's never had a bit of
harm done to her since the day she was born. I saw that look on her
face, and I knew I could let myself fall asleep with an easy heart.
When I woke at six in the morning, she was gone. Her nightdress was
there, where she had dropped it, but her clothes and trainers and the
torch I always keep by my pillow were missing. I knew immediately
that something was wrong. I mean, the very fact that she had taken the
torch meant she had left in the dark. I checked her desk just in case,
and
there was the note: Please give all my clothes to Reiko. I woke
up everybody straight away, and we took different paths to look for
her. We searched every inch of the place, from the insides of the
dorms to the surrounding woods. It took us five hours to find her.
She'd even brought her own rope."
Reiko sighed and patted the cat.
"Want some tea?" I asked.
"Yes, thanks," said Reiko.
I boiled water and brought a pot of tea back to the veranda. Sundown
was approaching. The daylight had grown weak, and long shadows of
trees stretched to our feet. I sipped my tea and looked at the strangely
random garden with its funny mix of yellow globeflowers and pink
azaleas and tall, green nandins.
"So then the ambulance came and took Naoko away and the police
started questioning me. Not that there was much doubt. There was a
kind of suicide note, and it had obviously been a suicide, and they
took it for granted that suicide was just one of those things that mental
patients did. So it was pretty pro forma. As soon as they left, I
telegraphed you."
"What a sad little funeral it was," I said. "Her family was obviously
upset that I knew Naoko had died. I'm sure they didn't want people to
know it was suicide. I probably shouldn't even have been there. Which
made me feel even worse. As soon as I got back, I hit the road."
"Hey, Watanabe, let's go for a walk. We can shop for something to
make for dinner, maybe. I'm starving."
"Sure. Is there something you want to eat?"
"Sukiyaki," she said. "I haven't had anything like that for years. I used
to dream about sukiyaki - just stuffing myself with beef and green
onions and noodles and roasted tofu and greens."
"Sure, we can have that, but I don't have a sukiyaki pan." "Just leave it
to me. I'll borrow one from your landlord." She ran off to the main
house and came back with a good
sized pan and gas cooker and rubber hose. "Not bad, eh?"
"Not bad!"
We bought all the ingredients at the little shops in the neighbourhood -
beef, eggs, vegetables, tofu. I picked out a fairly decent white wine. I
tried to pay, but Reiko insisted on paying for everything.
"Think how the family would laugh at me if they heard I let my
nephew pay for the food!" said Reiko. "Besides, I'm carrying a fair
amount of cash. So don't worry. I wasn't about to leave the sanatorium
broke."
Reiko washed the rice and put it on to boil while I arranged everything
for cooking on the veranda. When everything was ready, Reiko took
out her guitar and appeared to be testing it with a slow Bach fugue. On
the hard parts she would purposely slow down or speed up or make it
detached or sentimental, listening with obvious pleasure to the variety
of sounds she could draw from the instrument. When she played the
guitar, Reiko looked like a 17-year-old girl enjoying the sight of a new
dress. Her eyes sparkled, and she pouted with just the hint of a smile.
When she had finished the piece, she leaned back against a pillar and
looked up at the sky as though deep in thought.
"Do you mind if I talk to you?" I asked.
"Not at all," she said. "I was just thinking how hungry I am."
"Aren't you planning to see your husband or your daughter while
you're here? They must be in Tokyo somewhere."
"Close enough. Yokohama. But no, I don't plan to see them. I'm sure I
told you before: it's better for them if they don't have anything more to
do with me. They've started a new life. And I'd just feel terrible if I
saw them. No, the best thing is to keep away."
She crumpled up her empty box of Seven Stars cigarettes and took a
new one from her suitcase. She cut the seal and put a cigarette in her
mouth, but she didn't light up.
"I'm finished as a human being," she said. "All you're looking at is the
lingering memory of what I used to be. The most important part of
me, what used to be inside, died years ago, and I'm just functioning by
auto-memory."
"But I like you now, Reiko, the way you are, lingering memory or
whatever. And what I have to say about it may not make any
difference, but I'm really glad that you're wearing Naoko's clothes."
Reiko smiled and lit her cigarette with a lighter. "For such a young
man, you know how to make a woman happy."
I felt myself reddening. "I'm just saying what I really think." "Sure, I
know," said Reiko, smiling. When the rice was done soon after that, I
oiled the pan and arranged the ingredients for sukiyaki.
"Tell me this isn't a dream," said Reiko, sniffing the air.
"No, this is 100 per cent realistic sukiyaki," I said. "Empiri cally
speaking, of course."
Instead of talking, we attacked the sukiyaki with our chopsticks, drank
lots of beer, and finished up with rice. Seagull turned up, attracted by
the smell, so we shared our meat with her. When we had eaten our fill,
we sat leaning against the porch pillars looking at the moon.
"Satisfied?" I asked.
"Totally," she groaned. "I've never eaten so much in my life."
"What do you want to do now?"
"Have a smoke and go to a public bath. My hair's a mess. I need to
wash it."
"No problem. There's one down the street."
"Tell me, Watanabe, if you don't mind. Have you slept with that girl
Midori?"
"You mean have we had sex? Not yet. We decided not to until things
get sorted out."
"Well, now they're sorted out, wouldn't you say?"
I shook my head. "Now that Naoko's dead, you mean?"
"No, not that. You made your decision long before Naoko died - that
you could never leave Midori. Whether Naoko is alive or dead, it has
nothing to do with your decision. You chose Midori. Naoko chose to
die. You're all grown up now, so you have to take responsibility for
your choices. Otherwise, you ruin everything."
"But I can't forget her," I said. "I told Naoko I would go on waiting for
her, but I couldn't do it. I turned my back on her in the end. I'm not
saying anyone's to blame: it's a problem for me myself. I do think that
things would have worked out the same way even if I hadn't turned
my back on her. Naoko was choosing death all along. But that's beside
the point. I can't forgive myself. You tell me there's nothing I can do
about a natural change in feelings, but my relationship with Naoko
was not that simple. If you stop and think about it, she and I were
bound together at the border between life and death. It was like that
for us from the start."
"If you feel some kind of pain with regard to Naoko's death, I would
advise you to keep on feeling that pain for the rest of your life. And if
there's something you can learn from it, you should do that, too. But
quite aside from that, you should be happy with Midori. Your pain has
nothing to do with your relationship with her. If you hurt her any more
than you already have, the wound could be too deep to fix. So, hard as
it may be, you have to be strong. You have to grow up more, be more
of an adult. I left the sanatorium and came all the way up here to
Tokyo to tell you that - all the way on that coffin of a train."
"I understand what you're telling me," I said to Reiko, "but I'm still not
prepared to follow through on it. I mean, that was such a sad little
funeral! No one should have to die like that."

Reiko stretched out her hand and stroked my head. "We all have to die
like that sometime. I will, and so will you."

We took the five-minute walk along the river bank to the local public
baths and came home feeling more refreshed. I opened the bottle of
wine and we sat on the veranda drinking it.
"Hey, Watanabe, could you bring out another glass?"
"Sure," I said. "But what for?"
"We're going to have our own funeral for Naoko, just the two of us.
One that's not so sad."
When I handed her the glass, Reiko filled it to the brim and set it on
the stone lantern in the garden. Then she sat on the veranda, leaning
against a pillar, guitar in her arms, and smoked a cigarette.
"And now could you bring out a box of matches? Make it the biggest
one you can find."
I brought out an economy-size box of kitchen matches and sat down
next to her.
"Now what I want you to do is lay down a match every time I play a
song, just set them in a row. I'm going to play every song I can think
of."
First she played a soft, lovely rendition of Henry Mancini's "Dear
Heart".
"You gave a recording of this to Naoko, didn't you?" she asked.
"I did. For Christmas the year before last. She really liked that song."
"I like it, too," said Reiko. "So sweet and beautiful ..." and she ran
through a few bars of the melody one more time before taking another
sip of wine. "I wonder how many songs I can play before I get
completely drunk. This'll be a nice funeral, don't you think - not so
sad?"
Reiko moved on to the Beatles, playing "Norwegian Wood",
"Yesterday", "Michelle", and "Something". She sang and played
"Here Comes the Sun", then played "The Fool on the Hill". I laid
seven matches in a row.
"Seven songs," said Reiko, sipping more wine and smoking another
cigarette. "Those guys sure knew something about the sadness of life,
and gentleness."
By "those guys" Reiko of course meant John Lennon, Paul McCartney
and George Harrison. After a short breather, Reiko cr ushed her
cigarette out and picked up her guitar again. She played "Penny Lane",
"Blackbird", "Julia", "When I'm 64", "Nowhere Man", "And I Love
Her", and "Hey Jude".
"How many songs is that?"
"Fourteen," I said.
She sighed and asked me, "How about you? Can you play something -
maybe one song?"
"No way. I'm terrible."
"So play it terribly."
I brought out my guitar and stumbled my way through "Up on the
Roof". Reiko took a rest, smoking and drinking. When I was through,
she applauded.
Next she played a guitar transcription of Ravel's "Pavanne for a Dying
Queen" and a beautifully clean rendition of Debussy's "Claire de
Lune".
"I mastered both of these after Naoko died," said Reiko. "To the end,
her taste in music never rose above the sentimental."
She performed a few Bacharach songs next: "Close to You",
"Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head", "Walk on By", "Wedding Bell
Blues".
"Twenty," I said.
"I'm like a human jukebox!" exclaimed Reiko. "My professors would
faint if they could see me now."

She went on sipping and puffing and playing: several bossa novas,
Rogers and Hart, Gershwin, Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, Carole King,
The Beach Boys, Stevie Wonder, Kyu Sakamoto's "Sukiyaki Song",
"Blue Velvet", "Green Fields". Sometimes she would close her eyes
and nod or hum to the melody.
When the wine was gone, we turned to whisky. The wine in the glass
in the garden I poured over the stone lantern and replaced it with
whisky.
"How's our count going?" Reiko asked. "Forty-eight," I said.
For our forty-ninth song Reiko played "Eleanor Rigby", and the
fiftieth was another performance of "Norwegian Wood". After that she
rested her hands and drank some whisky. "Maybe that's enough," she
said.
"It is," I answered. "Amazing."
Reiko looked me in the eye and said, "Now listen to me, Watanabe. I
want you to forget all about that sad little funeral you saw. Just
remember this marvellous one of ours."
I nodded.
"Here's one more for good measure," she said, and for her fifty-first
piece she played her favourite Bach fugue. When she was through, she
said in a voice just above a whisper, "How about doing it with me,
Watanabe?"
"Strange," I said. "I was thinking the same thing."

We went inside and drew the curtains. Then, in the darkened room,
Reiko and I sought out each other's bodies as if it were the most
natural thing in the world for us to do. I removed her blouse and
trousers, and then her underwear.
"I've lived a strange life," said Reiko, "but I never thought I'd have my
panties removed for me by a man 19 years my junior."
"Would you rather take them off yourself?"
"No, go ahead. But don't be too shocked at all my wrinkles."
"I like your wrinkles."
"You're gonna make me cry," she whispered.
I kissed her all over, taking special care to follow the wrinkled places
with my tongue. She had the breasts of a little girl. I caressed them
and took her nipples in my teeth, then slid a finger inside her warm,
moist vagina and began to move it.
"Wrong spot, Watanabe," Reiko whispered in my ear. "That's just a
wrinkle."
"I can't believe you're telling jokes at a time like this!"
"Sorry," she said. "I'm scared. I haven't done this for years. I feel like
a 17-year-old girl: I just went to visit a guy in his room, and all of a
sudden I'm naked."
"To tell you the truth, I feel as if I'm violating a 17-year-old girl."
With my finger in her "wrinkle", I moved my lips up her neck to her
ear and took a nipple in my fingers. As her breathing intensified and
her throat began to tremble, I parted her long, slim legs and eased
myself inside her.
"You're not going to get me pregnant now, are you? You're taking care
of that, right?" Reiko murmured in my ear. "I'd be so embarrassed if I
got pregnant at this age."
"Don't worry," I said. "Just relax."
When I was all the way in, she trembled and released a sigh.
Caressing her back, I moved inside her and then, without warning, I
came. It was an intense, unstoppable ejaculation. I clutched at her as
my semen pulsed into her warmth again and again.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I couldn't stop myself."
"Don't be silly," Reiko said, giving me a little slap on the rump. "You
don't have to worry about that. Do you always have that on your mind
when you're doing it with girls?"
"Yeah, pretty much."
"Well, you don't have to think about it with me. Forget it.
Just let yourself go as much as you like. Did it feel good?" "Fantastic.
That's why I couldn't control myself."
"This is no time for controlling yourself. This is fine. It was
great for me, too."
"You know, Reiko," I said.
"What's that?"
"You ought to take a lover again. You're terrific. It's such a waste."
"Well, I'll think about it," she said. "But I wonder if people take lovers
and things in Asahikawa."
Growing hard a few minutes later, I went inside her again. Reiko held
her breath and twisted beneath me. I moved slowly and quietly with
my arms around her, and we talked. It felt wonderful to talk that way.
If I said something funny and made her laugh, the tremors came into
me through my penis. We held each other like this for a very long
time.
"Oh, this feels marvellous!" Reiko said.
"Moving's not bad either," I said.
"Go ahead. Give it a try."
I lifted her hips and went in as far as I could go, then savoured the
sensation of moving in a circular pattern until, having enjoyed it to the
full, I let myself come.

Altogether, we joined our bodies four times that night. At the end each
time, Reiko would lie in my arms trembling slightly, eyes closed, and
release a long sigh.
"I never have to do this again," said Reiko, "for the rest of my life. Oh,
please, Watanabe, tell me it's true. Tell me I can relax now because
I've done enough to last a lifetime."
"Nobody can tell you that," I said. "There's no way of knowing."
I tried to convince Reiko that taking a plane would be faster and
easier, but she insisted on going to Asahikawa by train.
"I like the ferry to Hokkaido. And I have no desire to fly through the
air," she said. I accompanied her to Ueno Station. She carried her
guitar and I carried her suitcase. We sat on a platform bench waiting
for the train to pull in. Reiko wore the same tweed jacket and white
trousers she had on when she arrived in Tokyo.
"Do you really think Asahikawa's not such a bad place?" she asked.
"It's a nice town. I'll visit you there soon."
"Really?"
I nodded. "And I'll write to you."
"I love your letters. Naoko burned all the ones you sent her. And they
were such great letters too!"
"Letters are just pieces of paper," I said. "Burn them, and what stays in
your heart will stay; keep them, and what
vanishes will vanish."
"You know, Watanabe,
Asahikawa by myself. So be sure to write to me. Whenever I read
your letters, I feel you're right there next to me."
"If that's what you want, I'll write all the time. But don't worry. I know
you: you'll do fine wherever you go."
"And another thing. I kind of feel like there's something stuck inside
me. Could it be my imagination?"
"Just a lingering memory," I said and smiled. Reiko smiled, too.
"Don't forget about me," she said.
"I won't forget you," I said. "Ever."
"We may never meet again, but no matter where I go, I'll always
remember you and Naoko."
I saw that she was crying. Before I knew it, I was kissing her. Others
on the platform were staring at us, but I didn't care about such things
any more. We were alive, she and I. And all we had to think about was
continuing to live.
"Be happy," Reiko said to me as she boarded the train. "I've given you
all the advice I have to give. There's nothing left for me to say. Just be
happy. Take my share and Naoko's and combine them for yourself."
We held hands for a moment, and then we parted.

I phoned Midori.
"I have to talk to you," I said. "I have a million things to talk to you
about. A million things we have to talk about. All I want in this world
is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin
everything from the beginning."
Midori responded with a long, long silence - the silence of all the
misty rain in the world falling on all the new-mown lawns of the
world. Forehead pressed against the glass, I shut my eyes and waited.
At last, Midori's quiet voice broke the silence: "Where are you now?"
Where was I now?
Gripping the receiver, I raised my head and turned to see what lay
beyond the phone box. Where was I now? I had no idea. No idea at
all. Where was this place? All that flashed into my eyes were the
countless shapes of people walking by to nowhere. Again and again I
called out for Midori from the dead centre of this place that was no
place.