8

Halfway through that week I managed to cut my palm open on a piece
of broken glass. I hadn't noticed that one of the glass partitions in a
record shelf was cracked. I could hardly believe how much blood
gushed out of me, turning the floor bright red at my feet. The shop
manager found some towels and tied them tightly around the wound.
Then he made a phone call to casualty. He was a pretty useless guy
most of the time, but he acted with surprising efficiency. The hospital
was nearby, fortunately, but by the time I got there the towels were
soaked in red, and the blood they couldn't soak up had been dripping
on the tarmac. People scurried out of the way for me. They seemed to
think I had been injured in a fight. I felt no pain to speak of, but the
blood wouldn't stop.
The doctor was cool as he removed the blood-soaked towels, stopped
the bleeding with a tourniquet on my wrist, disinfected the wound and
sewed it up, telling me to come again the next day. Back at the record
shop, the manager told me to go home: he would put me down as
having worked my shift. I took a bus to the dorm and went straight to
Nagasawa's room. With my nerves on edge over the cut, I wanted to
talk to somebody, and I hadn't seen Nagasawa for a long time.
I found him in his room, drinking a can of beer and watching a
Spanish lesson on TV. "What the hell happened to you?" he asked
when he saw my bandage. I said I had cut myself but that it was
nothing much. He offered me a beer and I said no thanks.
"Just wait. This'll be over in a minute," said Nagasawa, and he went
on practising his Spanish pronunciation. I boiled some water and
made myself a cup of tea with a tea bag. A Spanish woman recited
example sentences: "I have never seen such terrible rain!", "Many
bridges were washed away in Barcelona." Nagasawa read the text
aloud in Spanish. "What awful sentences!" he said. "This kind of shit
is all they ever give you."
When the programme ended, he turned off the TV and took another
beer from his small refrigerator.
"Are you sure I'm not in the way?" I asked.
"No way. I was bored out of my mind. Sure you don't want a beer?"
"No, I really don't," I said.
"Oh, yeah, they posted the exam results the other day. I passed!"
"The Foreign Ministry exam?"
"That's it. Officially, it's called the "Foreign Affairs Public Service
Personnel First Class Service Examination'. What a joke!"
"Congratulations!" I said and gave him my left hand to shake.
"Thanks."
"Of course, I'm not surprised you passed."
"No, neither am I," laughed Nagasawa. "But it's nice to have it
official."
"Think you'll go abroad once you get in?"
"Nah, first they give you a year of training. Then they send you
overseas for a while."
I sipped my tea, and he drank his beer with obvious satisfaction.
"I'll give you this fridge if you'd like it when I get out of here," said
Nagasawa. "You'd like to have it, wouldn't you? It's great for beer."
"Yeah, I'd like to have it, but won't you need it? You'll be living in a
flat or something."
"Don't be stupid! When I get out of this place, I'm buying myself a big
fridge. I'm gonna live the high life! Four years in a shithole like this is
long enough. I don't want to have to look at anything I used in this
place. You name it, I'll give it to you - the TV, the thermos flask, the
radio. .."
"I'll take anything you want to give me," I said. I picked up the
Spanish textbook on his desk and stared at it. "You're starting
Spanish?"
"Yeah. The more languages you know the better. And I've got a knack
for them. I taught myself French and it's practi cally perfect.
Languages are like games. You learn the rules for one, and they all
work the same way. Like women."
"Ah, the reflective life!" I said with a sarcastic edge.
"Anyway, let's eat out soon."
"You mean cruising for women?"
"No, a real dinner. You, me and Hatsumi at a good restaurant. To
celebrate my new job. My old man's paying, so we'll go somewhere
really expensive."
"Shouldn't it just be you and Hatsumi?"
"No, it'd be better with you there. I'd be more comfortable, and so
would Hatsumi."
Oh no, it was Kizuki, Naoko and me all over again.
"I'll spend the night at Hatsumi's afterwards, so join us just for the
meal."
"OK, if you both really want me to," I said. "But, anyway, what are
you planning to do about Hatsumi? You'll be assigned overseas when
you finish your training, and you probably won't come back for years.
What's going to happen to her?"
"That's her problem."
"I don't get it," I said.
Feet on his desk, Nagasawa took a swig of beer and yawned.
"Look, I'm not planning to get married. I've made that perfectly clear
to Hatsumi. If she wants to marry someone, she should go ahead and
do it. I won't stop her. If she wants to wait for me, let her wait. That's
what I mean."
"I have to hand it to you," I said.
"You think I'm a shit, don't you?"
"I do."
"Look, the world is an inherently unfair place. I didn't write the rules.
It's always been that way. I have never once deceived Hatsumi. She
knows I'm a shit and that she can leave me whenever she decides she
can't take it. I told her that straight from the start."
Nagasawa finished his beer and lit a cigarette.
"Isn't there anything about life that frightens you?" I asked.
"Hey, I'm not a total idiot," said Nagasawa. "Of course life frightens
me sometimes. I don't happen to take that as the premise for
everything else, though. I'm going to give it 100 per cent and go as far
as I can. I'll take what I want and leave what I don't want. That's how I
intend to live my life, and if things go bad, I'll stop and reconsider at
that point. If you think about it, an unfair society is a society that
makes it possible for you to exploit your abilities to the limit."
"Sounds like a pretty self-centred way to live," I said. "Perhaps, but
I'm not just looking up at the sky and waiting for the fruit to drop. In
my own way, I'm working hard. I'm working ten times harder than
you are."
"That's probably true," I said.
"I look around me sometimes and I get sick to my stomach. Why the
hell don't these bastards do something? I wonder. They don't do a
fucking thing, and then they moan about it."
Amazed at the harshness of his tone, I looked at Nagasawa. "The way
I see it, people are working hard. They're working their fingers to the
bone. Or am I looking at things wrong?"
"That's not hard work. It's just manual labour," Nagasawa said with
finality. "The "hard work' I'm talking about is more self-directed and
purposeful."
"You mean, like studying Spanish while everyone else is taking it
easy?"
"That's it. I'm going to have Spanish mastered by next spring. I've got
English and German and French down pat, and I'm almost there with
Italian. You think things like that happen without hard work?"
Nagasawa puffed on his cigarette while I thought about Midori's
father. There was one man who had probably never even thought
about starting Spanish lessons on TV He had probably never thought
about the difference between hard work and manual labour, either. He
was probably too busy to think about such things - busy with work,
and busy bringing home a daughter who had run away to Fukushima.
"So, about that dinner of ours," said Nagasawa. "Would this Saturday
be OK for you?"
"Fine," I said.

Nagasawa picked a fancy French restaurant in a quiet backstreet of
Azabu. He gave his name at the door and the two of us were shown to
a secluded private room. Some 15 prints hung on the walls of the
small chamber. While we waited for Hatsumi to arrive, Nagasawa and
I sipped a delicious wine and chatted about the novels of Joseph
Conrad. He wore an expensive-looking grey suit. I had on an ordinary
blue blazer.
Hatsumi arrived 15 minutes later. She was carefully made up and
wore gold earrings, a beautiful deep blue dress, and tasteful red court
shoes. When I complimented her on the colour of her dress, she told
me it was called midnight blue.
"What an elegant restaurant!" she said.
"My old man always eats here when he comes to Tok yo," said
Nagasawa. "I came here with him once. I'm not crazy about these
snooty places."
"It doesn't hurt to eat in a place like this once in a while," said
Hatsumi. Turning to me, she asked, "Don't you agree?" "I guess so. As
long as I'm not paying."
"My old man usually brings his mistress here," said Nagasawa. "He's
got one in Tokyo, you know." "Really?" asked Hatsumi. I took a sip of
wine, as if I had heard nothing.
Eventually a waiter came and took our orders. After choosing hors
d'oeuvres and soup, Nagasawa ordered duck, and Hatsumi and I
ordered sea bass. The food arrived at a leisurely pace, which allowed
us to enjoy the wine and conversation. Nagasawa spoke first of the
Foreign Ministry exam. Most of the examinees were scum who might
just as well be thrown into a bottomless pit, he said, though he
supposed there were a few decent ones in the bunch. I asked if he
thought the ratio of good ones to scum was higher or lower than in
society at large.
"It's the same," he said. "Of course." It was the same everywhere, he
added: an immutable law.
Nagasawa ordered a second bottle of wine and a double Scotch for
himself.
Hatsumi then began talking about a girl she wanted to fix me up with.
This was a perpetual topic between us. She was always telling me
about some "cute girl in my club", and I was always running away.
"She's really nice, though, and really cute. I'll bring her along next
time. You ought to talk to her. I'm sure you'll like her."
"It's a waste of time, Hatsumi," I said. "I'm too poor to go out with
girls from your university. I can't talk to them."
"Don't be silly," she said. "This girl is simple and natural and
unaffected."
"Come on, Watanabe," said Nagasawa. "Just meet her. You don't have
to screw her."
"I should say not!" said Hatsumi. "She's a virgin."
"Like you used to be," said Nagasawa.
"Exactly," said Hatsumi with a bright smile. "Like I used to be. But
really," she said to me, "don't give me that stuff about being "too
poor'. It's got nothing to do with it. Sure, there are a few super-stuck-
up girls in every year, but the rest of us are just ordinary. We all eat
lunch in the school cafeteria for ?250 - "
"Now wait just a minute, Hatsumi," I said, interrupting her. "In my
school the cafeteria has three lunches: A, B, and C. The A Lunch is
?120, the B Lunch is ?100, and the C Lunch is ?80. Everybody gives
me dirty looks when I eat the A Lunch, and anyone who can't afford
the C Lunch eats ramen noodles for ?60. That's the kind of place I go
to. You still think I can talk to girls from yours?"
Hatsumi could barely stop laughing. "That's so cheap!" she said.
"Maybe I should go there for lunch! But really, Toru, you're such a
nice guy, I'm sure you'd get along with this girl. She might even like
the ?120 lunch."
"No way," I said with a laugh. "Nobody eats that stuff because they
like it; they eat it because they can't afford anything else."
"Anyway, don't judge a book by its cover. It's true we go to this hoity-
toity establishment, but lots of us there are serious people who think
serious thoughts about life. Not everybody is looking for a boyfriend
with a sports car."
"I know that much," I said.
"Watanabe's got a girl. He's in love," said Nagasawa. "But he won't
say a word about her. He's as tight-lipped as they come. A riddle
wrapped in an enigma."
"Really?" Hatsumi asked me.
"Really," I said. "But there's no riddle involved here. It's just that it's
complicated, and hard to talk about."
"An illicit love? Ooh! You can talk to me!" I took a sip of wine to
avoid answering.
"See what I mean?" said Nagasawa, at work on his third whisky.
"Tight-lipped. When this guy decides he's not going to talk about
something, nobody can drag it out of him." "What a shame," said
Hatsumi as she cut a small slice of terrine and brought it to her lips.
"If you'd got on with her, we could have double-dated."
"Yeah, we could've got drunk and done a little swapping," said
Nagasawa.
"Enough of that kind of talk," said Hatsumi.
"What do you mean "that kind of talk'? Watanabe's got his eye on
you," said Nagasawa.
"That has nothing to do with what I'm talking about," Hatsumi
murmured. "He's not that kind of person. He's sincere and caring. I can
tell. That's why I've been trying to fix him up."
"Oh, sure, he's sincere. Like the time we swapped women once, way
back when. Remember, Watanabe?" Nagasawa said this with a blasé
look on his face, then slugged back the rest of his whisky and ordered
another.
Hatsumi set her knife and fork down and dabbed at her mouth with
her napkin. Then, looking at me, she asked, "Toru, did you really do
that?"
I didn't know how to answer her, and so I said nothing.
"Tell her," said Nagasawa. "What the hell." The mood was turning
sour. Nagasawa could get nasty when he was drunk, but tonight his
nastiness was aimed at Hatsumi, not at me. Knowing that made it all
the more difficult for me to go on sitting there.
"I'd like to hear about that," said Hatsumi. "It sounds very interesting!"
"We were drunk," I said.
"That's all right, Toru. I'm not blaming you. I just want you to tell me
what happened."
"The two of us were drinking in a bar in Shibuya, and we got friendly
with this pair of girls. They went to some college, and they were
pretty plastered, too. So, anyway, we, uh, went to a hotel and slept
with them. Our rooms were right next door to each other. In the
middle of the night, Nagasawa knocked on my door and said we
should change girls, so I went to his room and he came to mine."
"Didn't the girls mind?"
"No, they were drunk too."
"Anyway, I had a good reason for doing it," said Nagasawa.
"A good reason?"
"Well, the girls were too different. One was really goodlooking, but
the other one was a dog. It seemed unfair to me. I got the pretty girl,
but Watanabe got stuck with the other one. That's why we swapped.
Right, Watanabe?"
"Yeah, I s'pose so," I said. But in fact, I had liked the not-pretty one.
She was fun to talk to and a nice person. After we had sex, we were
enjoying talking to each other in bed when Nagasawa showed up and
suggested we change partners. I asked the girl if she minded, and she
said it was OK with her if that's what we wanted. She probably
thought I wanted to do it with the pretty one.
"Was it fun?" Hatsumi asked me.
"Swapping, you mean?"
"The whole thing."
"Not especially. It's just something you do. Sleeping with girls that
way is not all that much fun."
"So why do you do it?"
"Because of me," said Nagasawa.
"I'm asking Toru," Hatsumi shot back at Nagasawa. "Why do you do
something like that?"
"Because sometimes I have this tremendous desire to sleep with a
girl."
"If you're in love with someone, can't you manage one way or another
with her?" Hatsumi asked after a few moments' thought.
"It's complicated."
Hatsumi sighed.
At that point the door opened and the food was carried in. Nagasawa
was presented with his roast duck, and Hatsumi and I received our sea
bass. The waiters heaped freshcooked vegetables on our plates and
dribbled sauce on them before withdrawing and leaving the three of us
alone again. Nagasawa cut a slice of duck and ate it with gusto,
followed by more whisky. I took a forkful of spinach. Hatsumi didn't
touch her food.

"You know, Toru," she said, "I have no idea what makes your
situation so "complicated', but I do think that the kind of thing you just
told me about is not right for you. You're not that kind of person.
What do you think?" She placed her hands on the table and looked me
in the eye.
"Well," I said, "I've felt that way myself sometimes."
"So why don't you stop?"
"Because sometimes I have a need for human warmth," I answered
honestly. "Sometimes, if I can't feel something like the warmth of a
woman's skin, I get so lonely I can't stand it."
"Here, let me summarize what I think it's all about," inter jected
Nagasawa. "Watanabe's got this girl he likes, but for certain
complicated reasons, they can't do it. So he tells himself "Sex is just
sex', and he takes care of his need with somebody else. What's wrong
with that? It makes perfect sense. He can't just stay locked in his room
tossing off all the time, can he?"
"But if you really love her, Toru, shouldn't it be possible for you to
control yourself?"
"Maybe so," I said, bringing a piece of sea bass in cream sauce to my
mouth.
"You just don't understand a man's sexual needs," said Nagasawa to
Hatsumi. "Look at me, for example. I've been with you for three years,
and I've slept with plenty of women in that time. But I don't remember
a thing about them. I don't know their names, I don't remember their
faces. I slept with each of them exactly once. Meet 'em, do it, so long.
That's it. What's wrong with that?"
"What I can't stand is that arrogance of yours," said Hatsumi in a soft
voice. "Whether you sleep with other women or not is beside the
point. I've never really been angry with you for sleeping around, have
I?"

"You can't even call what I do sleeping around. It's just a game.
Nobody gets hurt," said Nagasawa.
"I get hurt," said Hatsumi. "Why am I not enough for you?"
Nagasawa kept silent for a moment and swirled the whisky in his
glass. "It's not that you're not enough for me. That's another phase,
another question. It's just a hunger I have inside me. If I've hurt you,
I'm sorry. But it's not a question of whether or not you're enough for
me. I can only live with that hunger. That's the kind of man I am.
That's what makes me me. There's nothing I can do about it, don't you
see?"
At last Hatsumi picked up her silverware and started eating her fish.
"At least you shouldn't drag Toru into your "games'."
"We're a lot alike, though, Watanabe and me," said Nagasawa.
"Neither of us is interested, essentially, in anything but ourselves. OK,
so I'm arrogant and he's not, but neither of us is able to feel any
interest in anything other than what we ourselves think or feel or do.
That's why we can think about things in a way that's totally divorced
from anybody else. That's what I like about him. The only difference
is that he hasn't realized this about himself, and so he hesitates and
feels hurt."
"What human being doesn't hesitate and feel hurt?" Hatsumi
demanded. "Are you trying to say that you have never felt those
things?"
"Of course I have, but I've disciplined myself to where I can minimize
them. Even a rat will choose the least painful route if you shock him
enough."
"But rats don't fall in love."
""Rats don't fall in love'." Nagasawa looked at me. "That's great. We
should have background music for this - a full orchestra with two
harps and - "
"Don't make fun of me. I'm serious."
-We're eating," said Nagasawa. "And Watanabe's here. It ,night be
more civil for us to confine 'serious' talk to another occasion."
"I can leave," I said.
"No," said Hatsumi. "Please stay. It's better with you here."
"At least have dessert," said Nagasawa.
"I don't mind, really."
The three of us went on eating in silence for a time. I finished my fish.
Hatsumi left half of hers. Nagasawa had polished off his duck long
before and was now concentrating on his whisky.
"That was excellent sea bass," I offered, but no one took me up on it. I
might as well have thrown a rock down a deep well.
The waiters took away our plates and brought lemon sherbet and
espresso. Nagasawa barely touched his dessert and coffee, moving
directly to a cigarette. Hatsumi ignored her sherbet. "Oh boy," I
thought to myself as I finished my sherbet and coffee. Hatsumi stared
at her hands on the table. Like everything she wore, her hands looked
chic and elegant and expensive. I thought about Naoko and Reiko.
What would they be doing now? I wondered. Naoko could be lying on
the sofa reading a book, and Reiko might be playing "Norwegian
Wood" on her guitar. I felt an intense desire to go back to that little
room of theirs. What the hell was I doing in this place?
"Where Watanabe and I are alike is, we don't give a shit if nobody
understands us," Nagasawa said. "That's what makes us different from
everybody else. They're all worried about whether the people around
them understand them. But not me, and not Watanabe. We just don't
give a shit. Self and others are separate."
"Is this true?" Hatsumi asked me.
"No," I said. "I'm not that strong. I don't feel it's OK if nobody
understands me. I've got people I want to understand and be
understood by. But aside from those few, well, I feel it's kind of
hopeless. I don't agree with Nagasawa. I do care if people understand
me."
"That's practically the same thing as what I'm saying," said Nagasawa,
picking up his coffee spoon. "It is the same! It's the difference
between a late breakfast or an early lunch. Same time, same food,
different name."
Now Hatsumi spoke to Nagasawa. "Don't you care whether I
understand you or not?"
"You don't get it, do you? Person A understands Person B because the
time is right for that to happen, not because Person B wants to be
understood by Person A."
"So is it a mistake for me to feel that I want to be understood by
someone - by you, for example?"
"No, it's not a mistake," answered Nagasawa. "Most people would call
that love, if you think you want to understand me. My system for
living is way different from other people's systems for living."
"So what you're saying is you're not in love with me, is that it?"
"Well, my system and your - "
"To hell with your fucking system!" Hatsumi shouted. That
was the first and last time I ever heard her shout.
Nagasawa pushed the button by the table, and the waiter
came in with the bill. Nagasawa handed him a credit card. "Sorry
about this, Watanabe," said Nagasawa. "I'm going
to see Hatsumi home. You go back to the dorm alone, OK?" "You
don't have to apologize to me. Great meal," I said, but
no one said anything in response.
The waiter brought the card, and Nagasawa signed with a ballpoint
pen after checking the amount. Then the three of us stood and went
outside. Nagasawa started to step into the street to hail a taxi, but
Hatsumi stopped him.
"Thanks, but I don't want to spend any more time with you today. You
don't have to see me home. Thank you for dinner."
,,Whatever," said Nagasawa.
"I want Toru to see me home."
"Whatever," said Nagasawa. "But Watanabe's practically the same as
me. He may be a nice guy, but deep down in his heart he's incapable
of loving anybody. There's always some part of him somewhere that's
wide awake and detached. He just has that hunger that won't go away.
Believe me, I know what I'm talking about."
I flagged down a taxi and let Hatsumi in first. "Anyway," I said to
Nagasawa, "I'll make sure she gets home."
"Sorry to put you through this," said Nagasawa, but I could see that he
was already thinking about something else.
Once inside the cab, I asked Hatsumi, "Where do you want to go?
Back to Ebisu?" Her flat was in Ebisu.
She shook her head.
"OK. How about a drink somewhere?"
"Yes," she said with a nod.
"Shibuya," I told the driver.
Folding her arms and closing her eyes, Hatsumi sank back into the
corner of the seat. Her small gold earrings caught the light as the taxi
swayed. Her midnight-blue dress seemed to have been made to match
the darkness of the interior. Every now and then her lightly made-up,
beautifully formed lips would quiver slightly as though she had caught
herself on the verge of talking to herself. Watching her, I could see
why Nagasawa had chosen her as his special companion. There were
any number of women more beautiful than Hatsumi, and Nagasawa
could have made any of them his. But Hatsumi had some quality that
could send a tremor through your heart. It was nothing forceful. The
power she exerted was a subtle thing, but it called forth deep
resonances. I watched her all the way to Shibuya, and wondered,
without ever finding an answer, what this emotional reverberation
could be that I was feeling.

It finally hit me some dozen or so years later. I had gone to Santa Fe
to interview a painter and was sitting in a local pizza parlour, drinking
beer and eating pizza and watching a miraculously beautiful sunset.
Everything was soaked in brilliant red - my hand, the plate, the table,
the world - as if some special kind of fruit juice had splashed down on
everything. In the midst of this overwhelming sunset, the image of
Hatsumi flashed into my mind, and in that moment I understood what
that tremor of the heart had been. It was a kind of childhood longing
that had always remained - and would for ever remain - unfulfilled. I
had forgotten the existence of such innocent, almost burnt-in longing:
forgotten for years that such feelings had ever existed inside me. What
Hatsumi had stirred in me was a part of my very self that had long lain
dormant. And when the realization struck me, it aroused such sorrow I
almost burst into tears. She had been an absolutely special woman.
Someone should have done something - anything - to save her.
But neither Nagasawa nor I could have managed that. As so many of
those I knew had done, Hatsumi reached a certain stage in life and
decided - almost on the spur of the moment - to end it. Two years after
Nagasawa left for Germany, she married, and two years after that she
slashed her wrists with a razor blade.
It was Nagasawa, of course, who told me what had
happened. His letter from Bonn said this: "Hatsumi's death has
extinguished something. This is unbearably sad and painful, even to
me." I ripped his letter to shreds and threw it away. I never wrote to
him again.

Hatsumi and I went to a small bar and downed several drinks. Neither
of us said much. Like a bored, old married couple, we sat opposite
each other, drinking in silence and munching peanuts. When the place
began to fill up, we went for a walk. Hatsumi said she would pay the
bill, but I insisted on paying because the drinks had been my idea.
There was a deep chill in the night air. Hatsumi wrapped herself in her
pale grey cardigan and walked by my side in silence. I had no
destination in mind as we ambled through the nighttime streets, my
hands shoved deep into my pockets. This was just like walking with
Naoko, it occurred to me.
"Do you know somewhere we could play pool around here?" Hatsumi
asked me without warning.
"Pool? You play?"
"Yeah, I'm pretty good. How about you?"
"I play a little. Not that I'm very good at it."
"OK, then. Let's go."
We found a pool hall nearby and went in. It was a small place at the
far end of an alley. The two of us - Hatsumi in her chic dress and I in
my blue blazer and regimental tie - clashed with the scruffy pool hall,
but this didn't seem to concern Hatsumi at all as she chose and chalked
her cue. She pulled a hairslide from her bag and clipped her hair aside
at one temple to keep it from interfering with her game.
We played two games. Hatsumi was as good as she had claimed to be,
while my own game was hampered by the thick bandage I still wore
on my cut hand. She crushed me.

"You're great," I said in admiration.
"You mean appearances can be deceiving?" she asked as she sized up
a shot, smiling.
"Where did you learn to play like that?"
"My grandfather - my father's father - was an old playboy. He had a
table in his house. I used to play pool with my brother just for fun, and
when I got a little bigger my grandfather taught me the right moves.
He was a wonderful guy - stylish, handsome. He's dead now, though.
He always used to boast how he once met Deanna Durbin in New
York."
She got three in a row, then missed on the fourth try. I managed to
squeeze out a point, then missed an easy shot.
"It's the bandage," said Hatsumi to comfort me.
"No, it's because I haven't played for so long," I said. "Two years and
five months."
"How can you be so sure of the time?"
"My friend died the night after our last game together," I said.
"So you stopped playing?"
"No, not really," I said after giving it some thought. "I just never had
the opportunity to play after that. That's all." "How did your friend
die?"
"Traffic accident."
She made several more shots, aiming with deadly seriousness and
adjusting the strength of each shot with precision. Watching her in
action - her carefully set hair swept back out of her eyes, golden
earrings sparkling, court shoes set firmly on the floor, lovely, slender
fingers pressing the green baize as she took her shot - I felt as if her
side of the scruffy pool hall had been transformed into part of some
elegant social event. I had never spent time with her alone before, and
this was a marvellous experience for me, as though I had been drawn
up to a higher plane of life. At the end of the third game - in which, of
course, she crushed me again -my cut began to throb, and so we
stopped playing.
"I'm sorry," she said with what seemed like genuine concern, "I should
never have suggested this."
"That's OK," I said. "It's not a bad cut, I enjoyed playing. Really."
As we were leaving the pool hall, the skinny woman owner said to
Hatsumi, "You've a good eye, sister." Hatsumi gave her a sweet smile
and thanked her as she paid the bill.
"Does it hurt?" she asked when we were outside.
"Not much," I said.
"Do you think it opened?"
"No, it's probably OK."
"I know! You should come to my place. I'll change your bandage for
you. I've got disinfectant and everything. Come on, I'm right over
there."
I told her it wasn't worth worrying about, that I'd be OK, but she
insisted we had to check to see if the cut had opened or not.
"Or is it that you don't like being with me? You want to go back to
your room as soon as possible, is that it?" she said with a playful
smile.
"No way," I said.
"All right, then. Don't stand on ceremony. It's a short walk."
Hatsumi's flat was a 15-minute walk from Shibuya towards Ebisu. By
no means a glamorous building, it was more than decent, with a nice
little lobby and a lift. Hatsumi sat me at the kitchen table and went to
the bedroom to change. She came out wearing a Princeton hooded
sweatshirt and cotton trousers - and no more gold earrings. Setting a
first-aid box on the table, she undid my bandage, checked to see that
the wound was still sealed, put a little disinfectant on the area and tied
a new bandage over the cut. She did all this like an expert. "How come
you're so good at so many things?" I asked.
"I used to do volunteer work at a hospital. Kind of like playing nurse.
That's how I learned."
When Hatsumi had finished with the bandage, she went and fetched
two cans of beer from the fridge. She drank half of hers, and I drank
mine plus the half she left. Then she showed me pictures of the other
girls in her club. She was right: some of them were cute.
"Any time you decide you want a girlfriend, come to me," she said.
"I'll fix you up straight away."
"Yes, Miss."
'All right, Toru, tell me the truth. You think I'm an old matchmaker,
don't you?"
"To some extent," I said, telling her the truth, but with a smile.
Hatsumi smiled, too. She looked good when she smiled.
"Tell me something else, Toru," she said. "What do you think about
Nagasawa and me?"
"What do you mean what do I think? About what?"
"About what I ought to do. From now on."
"It doesn't matter what I think," I said, taking a slug of cold beer.
"That's all right. Tell me exactly what you think."
"Well, if I were you, I'd leave him. I'd find someone with a more
normal way of looking at things and live happily ever after. There's no
way in hell you can be happy with him. The way he lives, it never
crosses his mind to try to make himself happy or to make others
happy. Staying with him will only wreck your nervous system. To me,
it's already a miracle that you've been with him three years. Of course,
I'm very fond of him in my own way. He's fun, and he has lots of great
qualities.
He has strengths and abilities that I could never hope to match. But in
the end, his ideas about things and the way he lives his life are not
normal. Sometimes, when I'm talking to him, I feel as if I'm going
around and around in circles. The same process that takes him higher
and higher leaves me going around in circles. It makes me feel so
empty! Finally, our very systems are totally different. Do you see
what I'm saying?"
"I do," Hatsumi said as she brought me another beer from the fridge.
"Plus, after he gets into the Foreign Ministry and does a year of
training, he'll be going abroad. What are you going to do all that time?
Wait for him? He has no intention of marrying anyone."
"I know that, too."
"So I've got nothing else to say."
"I see," said Hatsumi.
I slowly filled my glass with beer.
"You know, when we were playing pool before, something popped
into my mind," I said. "I was an only child, but all the time I was
growing up I never once felt deprived or wished I had brothers or
sisters. I was happy being alone. But all of a sudden, playing pool with
you, I had this feeling that I wished I had had an elder sister like you -
really chic and a knockout in a midnight-blue dress and gold earrings
and great with a pool cue."
Hatsumi flashed me a happy smile. "That's got to be the nicest thing
anybody's said to me in the past year," she said. "Really."
"All I want for you," I said, blushing, "is for you to be happy. It's
crazy, though. You seem like someone who could be happy with just
about anybody, so how did you end up with Nagasawa of all people?"

"Things like that just happen. There's probably not much you can do
about them. It's certainly true in my case. Of course, Nagasawa would
say it's my responsibility, not his.'
"I'm sure he would."
"But anyway, Toru, I'm not the smartest girl in the world. If anything,
I'm sort of on the stupid side, and old-fashioned. I couldn't care less
about "systems' and "responsibility'. All I want is to get married and
have a man I love hold me in his arms every night and make babies.
That's plenty for me. It's all I want out of life."
"And what Nagasawa wants out of life has nothing to do with that."
"People change, though, don't you think?" Hatsumi asked. "You mean,
like, they go out into society and get a kick up the arse and grow up?"
"Yeah. And if he's away from me for a long time, his feelings for me
could change, don't you think?"
"Maybe, if he were an ordinary guy," I said. "But he's different. He's
incredibly strong-willed - stronger than you or I can imagine. And he
only makes himself stronger with every day that goes by. If something
smashes into him, he just works to make himself stronger. He'd eat
slugs before he'd back down to anyone. What do you expect to get
from a man like that?"
"But there's nothing I can do but wait for him," said Hatsumi with her
chin in her hand.
"You love him that much?"
"I do," she answered without a moment's hesitation.
"Oh boy," I said with a sigh, drinking down the last of my beer. "It
must be a wonderful thing to be so sure that you love somebody."
"I'm a stupid, old-fashioned girl," she said. "Have another beer?"
"No, thanks, I must get going. Thanks for the bandage and beer."
As I was standing in the hallway putting on my shoes, the telephone
rang. Hatsumi looked at me, looked at the phone,
and looked at me again.
"Good night," I said, stepping outside. As I shut the door, I caught a
glimpse of Hatsumi picking up the receiver. It was the last time I ever
saw her.

It was 11.30 by the time I got back to the dorm. I went straight to
Nagasawa's room and knocked on his door. After the tenth knock it
occurred to me that this was Saturday night. Nagasawa always got
overnight permission on Saturday nights, supposedly to stay at his
relatives' house.
I went back to my room, took off my tie, put my jacket and trousers
on a hanger, changed into my pyjamas, and brushed my teeth. Oh no, I
thought, tomorrow is Sunday again! Sundays seemed to be rolling
around every four days. Another two Sundays and I would be 20 years
old. I stretched out in bed and stared at my calendar as dark feelings
washed over me.

I sat at my desk to write my Sunday morning letter to Naoko, drinking
coffee from a big cup and listening to old Miles Davis albums. A fine
rain was falling outside, while my room had the chill of an aquarium.
The smell of mothballs lingered in the thick jumper I had just taken
out of a storage box. High up on the window-pane clung a huge, fat
fly, unmoving. With no wind to stir it, the Rising Sun standard hung
limp against the flagpole like the toga of a Roman senator. A skinny,
timid-looking brown dog that had wandered into the quadrangle was
sniffing every blossom in the flowerbed. I couldn't begin to imagine
why any dog would have to go around sniffing flowers on a rainy day.
My letter was a long one, and whenever my cut right palm began to
hurt from holding the pen, I would let my eyes wander out to the rainy
quadrangle.
I began by telling Naoko how I had given my right hand a nasty cut
while working in the record shop, then went on to say that Nagasawa,
Hatsumi and I had had a sort of celebration the night before for
Nagasawa's having passed his Foreign Ministry exam. I described the
restaurant and the food. The meal was great, I said, but the atmosphere
got uncomfortable halfway through.
I wondered if I should write about Kizuki in connection with having
played pool with Hatsumi and decided to go ahead. I felt it was
something I ought to write about.

I still remember the last shot Kizuki took that day - the day he died. It
was a difficult cushion shot that I never expected him to get. Luck
seemed to be with him, though: the shot was absolutely perfect, and
the white and red balls hardly made a sound as they brushed each
other on the green baize for the last score of the game. It was such a
beautiful shot, I still have a vivid image of it to this day. For nearly
two-and-a-half years after that, I never touched a cue.
The night I played pool with Hatsumi, though, the thought of Kizuki
never crossed my mind until the first game ended, and this came as a
real shock to me. I had always assumed that I'd be reminded of Kizuki
whenever I played pool. But not until the first game was over and I
bought a Pepsi from a vending machine and started drinking it did I
even think of him. It was the pool hall we used to play in, and we had
often bet drinks on the outcome of our games.
I felt guilty that I hadn't thought of Kizuki straight away, as if I had
somehow abandoned him. Back in my room, though, I came to think
of it like this: two and-a-half years have gone by since it happened,
and Kizuki is still 17 years old. Not that this means my memory of
him has faded. The things that his death gave ise to are still there, r
bright and clear, inside me, some of them even clearer than when they
were new. What I want to say is this: I'm going to turn 20 soon. Part of
what Kizuki and I shared when we were 16 and 17 has already
vanished, and no amount of crying is going to bring that back. I can't
explain it any better than this, but I think that you can probably under-
stand what I felt and what I am trying to say. In fact, you are probably
the only one in the world who can understand.
I think of you now more than ever. It's raining today. Rainy Sundays
are hard for me. When it rains I can't do laundry, which means I can't
do ironing. I can't go walking, and I can't lie on the roof. About all I
can do is put the record player on auto repeat and listen to Kind of
Blue over and over while I watch the rain falling in the quadrangle. As
I wrote to you earlier, I don't wind my spring on Sundays. That's why
this letter is so damn long. I'm stopping now. I'm going to the dining
hall for lunch. Goodbye.