The Elephant Vanishes: Stories Page 16

  “He’s not such a bad guy,” I said, scratching my ear.

  “What do you mean by that?” she asked.

  “He’s a serious individual. At least, more serious than I am.”

  “But you’re not serious at all.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. Thanks,” I said, looking at the ceiling.

  “So, where did he graduate from?”

  “Graduate?”

  “Where did he go to college?”

  “Ask him yourself,” I said, and hung up. I was sick of all this. I took a beer from the refrigerator and drank it alone.

  THE DAY AFTER the spaghetti argument with my sister, I woke up at eight-thirty. It was another beautiful, cloudless day, just like yesterday. In fact, it was like a continuation of yesterday, and my life seemed to be starting up again, too, after a halftime break.

  I threw my sweat-dampened pajamas into the hamper, took a shower, and shaved. While shaving, I thought about the girl I hadn’t quite been able to get last night. Ah, well, it just wasn’t in the cards. I did my best. I’ll have plenty more opportunities. Like next Sunday.

  I toasted two slices of bread and warmed up some coffee. I wanted to listen to an FM station but remembered the stereo was broken. Instead, I read book reviews in the paper and ate my toast. Not one of the books reviewed was something I thought I’d want to read: a novel on “the sex life of an old Jewish man, mingling fantasy and reality,” a historical study of treatments for schizophrenia, a complete exposé of the 1907 Ashio Copper Mine pollution incident. It’d be a lot more fun to sleep with the captain of a girls’ softball team. The newspaper probably chose books like this just to annoy us.

  Munching on my toast, I laid the paper on the table; then I noticed a memo under the jam jar. In my sister’s tiny handwriting, it said that she had invited Noboru Watanabe for dinner this Sunday and she expected me to be there.

  I finished eating, brushed the crumbs off my shirt, and put the dishes in the sink. Then I called the travel agency. My sister took the phone and said, “I can’t talk right now. I’ll call you back in ten minutes.”

  The call came twenty minutes later. In the meantime, I had done forty-three push-ups, trimmed all twenty finger-and toenails, picked out my shirt, necktie, jacket, and pants for the day, brushed my teeth, combed my hair, and yawned twice.

  “Did you see my note?” she asked.

  “Yup. Sorry, but I’ve got a date this Sunday. Made it a long time ago. If I had known, I would have left the day open. Too bad.”

  “You expect me to believe that? I know what you’re going to do: go somewhere and do something with some girl whose name you hardly know. Well, you can do that on Saturday.”

  “Saturday I have to be in the studio all day with an electric-blanket commercial. We’re busy these days.”

  “So cancel your date.”

  “I can’t. She’ll charge me a cancellation fee. And things are at a pretty delicate stage with her.”

  “Meaning things are not so delicate in my case?”

  “No, I don’t mean that at all,” I said, holding the necktie I had chosen next to the shirt hanging on a chairback. “But don’t forget: We’ve got this rule not to trespass on each other’s lives. You eat dinner with your fiancé and I’ll have a date with my girlfriend. What’s wrong with that?”

  “You know what’s wrong with that. Look how long it’s been since you’ve seen him. You met him once, and that was four months ago. It’s just not right. Every time I arrange something, you run away. Don’t you see how rude you’re being? He’s your sister’s fiancé. It wouldn’t kill you to have dinner with him once.”

  She had a point there, so I kept quiet. In fact, I had been trying to avoid crossing paths with him, but to me it seemed the most natural thing in the world to do. We had nothing in common to talk about, and it was exhausting to tell jokes using my sister as a simultaneous interpreter.

  “Will you please just join us this once? If you’ll do that much for me, I promise I won’t interfere with your sex life till the end of the summer.”

  “My sex life is pretty feeble at the moment. It might not make it through the summer.”

  “You will be home for dinner this Sunday, though, won’t you?”

  “How can I say no?”

  “He’ll probably fix the stereo for us. He’s good at that.”

  “Good with his hands, huh?”

  “You and your dirty mind,” she said, and hung up.

  I put on my necktie and went to work.

  The weather was clear all that week. Each day was like a continuation of the previous one. Wednesday night, I called my girlfriend to say we couldn’t get together on the weekend. She was understandably annoyed: We hadn’t seen each other for three weeks. Receiver still in hand, I dialed the college girl I had made a date with for Sunday, but she was out. She was out again on Thursday and on Friday.

  My sister woke me up at eight o’clock on Sunday morning. “Get out of bed, will you? I have to wash the sheets.”

  She stripped the sheets and pillowcase and ordered me out of my pajamas. My only refuge was the bathroom, where I showered and shaved. She was getting to be more and more like our mother. Women are like salmon: In the end, they all swim back to the same place.

  After the shower, I put on a pair of shorts and a faded T-shirt, and with long, long yawns I drank a glass of orange juice. My veins still carried some of last night’s alcohol; opening the Sunday paper would have been too much for me. I nibbled a few soda crackers from the box on the kitchen table and decided that that was all the breakfast I needed.

  My sister threw the sheets into the washing machine and cleaned our two rooms. Next, she put some soap and water in a bucket and washed down the walls and floors of the living room and kitchen. I sprawled on the sofa all this time, looking at the nude photos in a copy of Hustler that a friend of mine in the States had gotten past the postal censors. Amazing, the variety in shape and size of the female sex organ. They can be as different as people’s heights or IQs.

  “Stop hanging around and do some shopping for me, will you?” She handed me a list crammed full of things to buy. “And please hide that magazine. He’s very proper.”

  I laid the magazine down and studied the list. Lettuce, tomatoes, celery, French dressing, smoked salmon, mustard, onions, soup stock, potatoes, parsley, three steaks …

  “Steaks? I just had steak last night. Why don’t you make croquettes?”

  “Maybe you had steak last night, but we didn’t. Don’t be so selfish. You can’t serve croquettes when you have a guest for dinner.”

  “If some girl invited me to her house and fed me fresh-fried croquettes, I’d be deeply moved. With a nice pile of julienned white cabbage, a bowl of miso clam soup … that’s real life.”

  “Maybe so, but I have decided on steak. Next time I’ll feed you croquettes till you drop, but today you’ll have to make do with steak. Please.”

  “That’ll be fine,” I told her reassuringly. I can be a pain in the neck, but finally I’m a kind, understanding human being.

  I went to the neighborhood supermarket and bought everything on the list. On the way home, I stopped off at a liquor store and bought a 4,500-yen bottle of Chablis—my gift to the young couple. Only a kind, understanding human being would think of something like that.

  At home, I found a blue Ralph Lauren polo shirt and a spotless pair of cotton pants neatly folded on the bed.

  “Change into those,” she said.

  With another silent sigh, I did as I was told. I couldn’t have said anything to her that would have brought me back my pleasantly messy, peaceful Sunday.

  NOBORU WATANABE came riding up at three. Astride his trusty cycle, he arrived with the gentle zephyrs of springtime. I caught the ominous put-put of his 500CC Honda from a quarter mile away. I stuck my head out over the edge of the balcony to see him parking next to the entrance of our apartment house and taking off his helmet. Fortunately, once he removed that white dom
e with its STP sticker, his outfit today approached that of a normal human being: overstarched button-down check shirt, baggy white pants, and brown loafers with tassels—though the color of the shoes and belt didn’t match.

  “I think your friend from Fisherman’s Wharf is here,” I said to my sister, who was peeling potatoes at the kitchen sink.

  “Keep him company for a while, will you? I’ll finish up here.”

  “Bad idea. I don’t know what to talk to him about. You talk to him—I’ll do this.”

  “Don’t be silly. It wouldn’t look right for me to leave you in the kitchen. You talk to him.”

  The bell rang, and I opened the door to find Noboru Watanabe standing there. I showed him into the living room and settled him onto the couch. His gift for the evening was a selection of Baskin-Robbins’s thirty-one flavors, but cramming it into our tiny, already-stuffed freezer took a major effort on my part. What a pain. Of all the things he could have brought, why did he have to pick ice cream?

  “How about a beer?”

  “No thanks. I think I’m allergic to alcohol. One glass is enough to make me sick.”

  “I once drank a whole washbasinful of beer on a bet with some college friends.”

  “What did it do to you?”

  “My pee stank beer for two whole days. And I kept burping up this—”

  “Why don’t you have Noboru look at the stereo set?” interjected my sister, who had come along in the nick of time, as if she had smelled smoke, with two glasses of orange juice.

  “Good idea,” said Noboru.

  “I hear you’re good with your hands,” I said.

  “It’s true,” he confessed unabashedly. “I always used to enjoy making plastic models and radio kits. Anytime something broke in the house, I’d fix it. What’s wrong with the stereo?”

  “No sound,” I said. I turned on the amp and put on a record to show him.

  He crouched down in front of the stereo like a mongoose ready to spring. After fiddling with all the switches, he announced, “It’s definitely in the amplifier system, but it’s not internal.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “By the inductive method.”

  Oh, sure, the inductive method.

  He pulled out the mini-preamp and the power amplifier, removed all the cords connecting them, and began to examine each one. While he was busy with this, I took a can of Budweiser from the refrigerator and drank it alone.

  “It must be fun to be able to drink alcohol,” he said as he poked at a plug with a mechanical pencil.

  “I wonder,” I said. “I’ve been doing it so long I wouldn’t have anything to compare it with.”

  “I’ve been practicing a little.”

  “Practicing drinking?”

  “Yes. Is there something odd about that?”

  “No, not at all. You should start with white wine. Put some in a big glass with ice, cut it with Perrier and a squeeze of lemon juice. That’s what I drink instead of fruit juice.”

  “I’ll give it a try,” he said. “Aha! I thought so!”

  “What’s that?”

  “The connecting cords between the preamp and the power amp. The connection’s been broken at the plugs on both channels. This kind of pin plug can’t take much movement. In addition to which, they’re cheaply made. I’ll bet somebody moved the amplifier recently.”

  “I did the other day, when I was cleaning,” said my sister.

  “That’s it.”

  She looked at me. “We got this thing from your company. It’s their fault for using such weak parts.”

  “Well, I didn’t make it,” I muttered. “I just do the commercials.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Noboru Watanabe. “I can fix it right away if you’ve got a soldering iron.”

  “A soldering iron? Not in this house.”

  “Never mind. I’ll zip out and buy one. You really ought to have a soldering iron in the house. They come in handy.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet. But I don’t know where there’s a hardware store.”

  “I do. I passed one on the way.”

  I stuck my head out over the balcony again and watched Noboru Watanabe strap on his helmet, mount his bike, and disappear around a corner.

  “He’s so nice,” sighed my sister.

  “Yeah, a real honey.”

  NOBORU WATANABE finished repairing the pin plugs before five o’clock. He asked to hear some easy-listening vocals, so my sister put on a Julio Iglesias record. Since when did we have crap like that in the house?

  Noboru asked me, “What kind of music do you like?”

  “Oh, I just love stuff like this,” I blurted out. “You know: Bruce Springsteen, Jeff Beck, the Doors.”

  “Funny, I’ve never heard of any of those. Are they like Julio?”

  “Yeah, a lot like Julio.”

  He talked about the new computer system that his project team was currently developing. It was designed to generate an instantaneous diagram showing the most effective method for returning trains to the depot after an accident. In fact, it sounded like a great idea, but the principle made about as much sense to me as Finnish verb conjugations. While he raved on and on, I nodded at appropriate times and thought about women—like who I should take where to drink what on my next day off, including where we would eat and the hotel we’d use. I must have an inborn liking for such things. Just as there are those who like to make plastic models and draw train diagrams, I like to get drunk with women and sleep with them. It was a matter of Destiny, something that surpassed all human understanding.

  Around the time I was finishing my fourth beer, dinner was ready: smoked salmon, vichyssoise, steak, salad, and fried potatoes. As always, my sister’s cooking was pretty good. I opened the Chablis and drank it alone.

  As he sliced his tenderloin, Noboru Watanabe asked me, “Why did you take a job with an appliance manufacturer? I gather you’re not particularly interested in electrical devices.”

  My sister answered for me. “He’s not particularly interested in anything that’s of benefit to society. He would have taken a job anywhere. It just so happened he had an in with that particular company.”

  “I couldn’t have said it any better myself,” I chimed in.

  “All he thinks about is having fun. It never occurs to him to concentrate on anything seriously, to make himself a better person.”

  “Yours truly, the summer grasshopper.”

  “He gets a kick out of smirking at those who do choose to live seriously.”

  “Now, there you’re wrong,” I interjected. “What I do has nothing to do with what anybody else does. I just go along burning my own calories in accordance with my own ideas about things. What other people do doesn’t concern me. I don’t smirk at them; I don’t even look at them. I may be a good-for-nothing, but at least I don’t get in the way of other people.”

  “That’s not true!” cried Noboru Watanabe in something like a reflex action. “You’re not a good-for-nothing!” He must have been brought up well.

  “Thank you,” I said, raising my wineglass to him. “And by the way, congratulations on your engagement. Sorry to be the only one drinking.”

  “We’re planning to have the ceremony in October,” he said. “Probably too late to invite the squirrels and bears.”

  “Not to worry,” I said. Incredible, he was making jokes!

  “So, where will you go on your honeymoon? I suppose you can get discount fares?”

  “Hawaii,” my sister answered curtly.

  We talked for a while about airplanes. Having just read several books on the crash in the Andes, I brought up that topic.

  “When they ate human flesh, they would roast it in the sun on pieces of aluminum from the airplane.”

  My sister stopped eating and glared at me. “Why do you have to talk about such awful things at the dinner table? Do you say things like that when you’re eating with girls you’re trying to seduce?”

  Like a guest invited to dinner b
y a feuding married couple, Noboru Watanabe tried to come between us by asking me, “Have you ever thought of marrying?”

  “Never had the chance,” I said as I was about to put a chunk of fried potato in my mouth. “I had to raise my little sister without any help, and then came the long years of war …”

  “War? What war?”

  “It’s just another one of his stupid jokes,” said my sister, shaking the bottle of salad dressing.

  “Just another one of my stupid jokes,” I added. “But the part about not having had the chance is true. I’ve always been a narrow-minded guy, and I never used to wash my socks, so I was never able to find a nice girl who wanted to spend her life with me. Unlike you.”

  “Was there something wrong with your socks?” asked Noboru Watanabe.

  “That’s a joke, too,” my sister explained wearily. “I wash his socks, at least, every day.”

  Noboru Watanabe nodded and laughed for one and a half seconds. I was determined to make him laugh for three seconds next time.

  “But she’s been spending her life with you, hasn’t she?” he said, gesturing toward my sister.

  “Well, after all, she’s my sister.”

  “And we’ve stayed together because you do anything you please and I don’t say a thing. But that’s not a real life. In a real, grown-up, adult life, people confront each other honestly. I’m not saying the past five years with you haven’t been fun. It’s been a free and easy time for me. But lately, I’ve come to see that it’s not a real life. It hasn’t got—oh, I don’t know—the feel of what real life is all about. All you think about is yourself, and if somebody tries to have a serious conversation with you, you make fun of them.”

  “Deep down, I’m really a shy person.”

  “No, you’re just plain arrogant.”

  “I’m shy and arrogant,” I explained to Noboru Watanabe as I poured myself more wine. “I have this shy, arrogant way of returning trains to the depot after an accident.”

  “I think I see what you mean,” he said, nodding. “But do you know what I think? I think that after you’re alone—I mean, after she and I get married—that you are going to start wanting to get married, too.”

  “You may be right,” I said.