after the quake Read online

  “Have you been to Hokkaido before?” Shimao asked.

  Komura shook his head.

  “Yeah, I know. It’s a long way to come.”

  Komura nodded, then turned to survey his surroundings. “Funny,” he said, “sitting here like this, it doesn’t feel as if I’ve come all that far.”

  “Because you flew. Those planes are too damn fast. Your mind can’t keep up with your body.”

  “You may be right.”

  “Did you want to make such a long trip?”

  “I guess so,” Komura said.

  “Because your wife left?”

  He nodded.

  “No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself,” Shimao said.

  Komura was staring at the sugar bowl on the table as she spoke, but then he raised his eyes to hers.

  “It’s true,” he said. “No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself. It’s like your shadow. It follows you everywhere.”

  Shimao looked hard at Komura. “I’ll bet you loved her, didn’t you?”

  Komura dodged the question. “You’re a friend of Keiko Sasaki’s?”

  “Right. We do stuff together.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  Instead of answering him, Shimao asked, “Are you hungry?”

  “I wonder,” Komura said. “I feel kind of hungry and kind of not.”

  “Let’s go and eat something warm, the three of us. It’ll help you relax.”

  Shimao drove a small four-wheel-drive Subaru. It had to have way over a hundred thousand miles on it, judging from how battered it was. The rear bumper had a huge dent in it. Keiko Sasaki sat next to Shimao, and Komura had the cramped rear seat to himself. There was nothing particularly wrong with Shimao’s driving, but the noise in back was terrible, and the suspension was nearly shot. The automatic transmission slammed into gear whenever it downshifted, and the heater blew hot and cold. Shutting his eyes, Komura felt as if he had been imprisoned in a washing machine.

  No snow had been allowed to gather on the streets in Kushiro, but dirty, icy mounds stood at random intervals on both sides of the road. Dense clouds hung low and, although it was not yet sunset, everything was dark and desolate. The wind tore through the city in sharp squeals. There were no pedestrians. Even the traffic lights looked frozen.

  “This is one part of Hokkaido that doesn’t get much snow,” Keiko Sasaki explained in a loud voice, glancing back at Komura. “We’re on the coast and the wind is strong, so whatever piles up gets blown away. It’s cold, though, freezing cold. Sometimes it feels like it’s taking your ears off.”

  “You hear about drunks who freeze to death sleeping on the street,” Shimao said.

  “Do you get bears around here?” Komura asked.

  Keiko giggled and turned to Shimao. “Bears, he says.”

  Shimao gave the same kind of giggle.

  “I don’t know much about Hokkaido,” Komura said by way of explanation.

  “I know a good story about bears,” Keiko said. “Right, Shimao?”

  “A great story!” Shimao said.

  But their talk broke off at that point, and neither of them told the bear story. Komura didn’t ask to hear it. Soon they reached their destination, a big noodle shop on the highway. They parked in the lot and went inside. Komura had a beer and a hot bowl of ramen noodles. The place was dirty and empty, and the chairs and tables were rickety, but the ramen was excellent, and when he had finished eating, Komura did, in fact, feel a little more relaxed.

  “Tell me, Mr. Komura,” Keiko Sasaki said, “do you have something you want to do in Hokkaido? My brother tells me you’re going to spend a week here.”

  Komura thought about it for a moment, but couldn’t come up with anything he wanted to do.

  “How about a hot spring? Would you like a nice, long soak in a tub? I know a little country place not far from here.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Komura said.

  “I’m sure you’d like it. It’s really nice. No bears or anything.”

  The two women looked at each other and laughed again.

  “Do you mind if I ask you about your wife?” Keiko said.

  “I don’t mind.”

  “When did she leave?”

  “Hmm… five days after the earthquake, so that’s more than two weeks ago now.”

  “Did it have something to do with the earthquake?”

  Komura shook his head. “Probably not. I don’t think so.”

  “Still, I wonder if things like that aren’t connected somehow,” Shimao said with a tilt of the head.

  “Yeah,” Keiko said. “It’s just that you can’t see how.”

  “Right,” Shimao said. “Stuff like that happens all the time.”

  “Stuff like what?” Komura asked.

  “Like, say, what happened with somebody I know,” Keiko said.

  “You mean Mr. Saeki?” Shimao asked.

  “Exactly,” Keiko said. “There’s this guy—Saeki. He lives in Kushiro. He’s about forty. A hairstylist. His wife saw a UFO last year, in the autumn. She was driving on the edge of town all by herself in the middle of the night and she saw a huge UFO land in a field. Whoosh! Like in Close Encounters. A week later, she left home. They weren’t having any domestic problems or anything. She just disappeared and never came back.”

  “Into thin air,” Shimao said.

  “And it was because of the UFO?” Komura asked.

  “I don’t know why,” Keiko said. “She just walked out. No note or anything. She had two kids in elementary school, too. The whole week before she left, all she’d do was tell people about the UFO. You couldn’t get her to stop. She’d go on and on about how big and beautiful it was.”

  She paused to let the story sink in.

  “My wife left a note,” Komura said. “And we don’t have any kids.”

  “So your situation’s a little better than Saeki’s,” Keiko said.

  “Yeah. Kids make a big difference,” Shimao said, nodding.

  “Shimao’s father left home when she was seven,” Keiko explained with a frown. “Ran off with his wife’s younger sister.”

  “All of a sudden. One day,” Shimao said, smiling.

  A silence settled over the group.

  “Maybe Mr. Saeki’s wife didn’t run away but was captured by aliens from the UFO,” Komura said to smooth things over.

  “It’s possible,” Shimao said with a somber expression. “You hear stories like that all the time.”

  “You mean like you’re-walking-along-the-street-and-a-bear-eats-you kind of thing?” Keiko asked. The two women laughed again.

  The three of them left the noodle shop and went to a nearby love hotel. It was on the edge of town, on a street where love hotels alternated with gravestone dealers. The hotel Shimao had chosen was an odd building, constructed to look like a European castle. A triangular red flag flew on its highest tower.

  Keiko got the key at the front desk, and the three of them took the elevator to the room. The windows were tiny, compared with the absurdly big bed. Komura hung his down jacket on a hanger and went into the toilet. During the few minutes he was in there, the two women managed to run a bath, dim the lights, check the heat, turn on the television, examine the delivery menus from local restaurants, test the light switches at the head of the bed, and check the contents of the minibar.

  “The owners are friends of mine,” Keiko said. “I had them get their biggest room ready. It is a love hotel, but don’t let that bother you. You’re not bothered, are you?”

  “Not at all,” Komura said.

  “I thought this would make a lot more sense than sticking you in a cramped little room in some cheap business hotel by the station.”

  “You may be right,” Komura said.

  “Why don’t you take a bath? I filled the tub.”

  Komura did as he was told. The tub was huge. He felt uneasy soaking in it alone. The couples who came to this hotel probably took bath
s together.

  When he emerged from the bathroom, Komura was surprised to find that Keiko Sasaki had left. Shimao was still there, drinking beer and watching TV.

  “Keiko went home,” Shimao said. “She wanted me to apologize and tell you that she’ll be back tomorrow morning. Do you mind if I stay here a little while and have a beer?”

  “Fine,” Komura said.

  “You’re sure it’s no problem? Like, you want to be alone or you can’t relax if somebody else is around or something?”

  Komura insisted it was no problem. Drinking a beer and drying his hair with a towel, he watched TV with Shimao. It was a news special on the Kobe earthquake. The usual images appeared again and again: tilted buildings, buckled streets, old women weeping, confusion and aimless anger. When a commercial came on, Shimao used the remote to switch off the TV.

  “Let’s talk,” she said, “as long as we’re here.”

  “Fine,” Komura said.

  “Hmm, what should we talk about?”

  “In the car, you and Keiko said something about a bear, remember? You said it was a great story.”

  “Oh yeah,” she said, nodding. “The bear story.”

  “You want to tell it to me?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  Shimao got a fresh beer from the minibar and filled both their glasses.

  “It’s a little raunchy,” she said. “You don’t mind?”

  Komura shook his head.

  “I mean, some men don’t like hearing a woman tell certain kinds of stories.”

  “I’m not like that.”

  “It’s something that actually happened to me, so it’s a little embarrassing.”

  “I’d like to hear it if you’re OK with it.”

  “I’m OK, if you’re OK.”

  “I’m OK,” Komura said.

  “Three years ago—back around the time I entered junior college—I was dating this guy. He was a year older than me, a college student. He was the first guy I had sex with. One day the two of us were out hiking—in the mountains way up north.”

  She took a sip of beer.

  “It was fall, and the hills were full of bears. That’s the time of year when the bears are getting ready to hibernate, so they’re out looking for food and they’re really dangerous. Sometimes they attack people. They did an awful job on one hiker just three days before we went out. So somebody gave us a bell to carry—about the same size as a wind-bell. You’re supposed to shake it when you walk so the bears know there are people around and won’t come out. Bears don’t attack people on purpose. I mean, they’re pretty much vegetarians. They don’t have to attack people. What happens is they suddenly bump into people in their territory and they get surprised or angry and they attack out of reflex. So if you walk along ringing your bell, they’ll avoid you. Get it?”

  “I get it.”

  “So that’s what we were doing, walking along and ringing the bell. We got to this place where there was nobody else around, and all of a sudden he said he wanted to… do it. I kind of liked the idea, too, so I said OK and we went into this bushy place off the trail where nobody could see us, and we spread out a piece of plastic. But I was afraid of the bears. I mean, think how awful it would be to have some bear attack you from behind and kill you when you’re having sex! I would never want to die that way. Would you?”

  Komura agreed that he would not want to die that way.

  “So there we were, shaking the bell with one hand and having sex. Kept it up from start to finish. Ding-a-ling! Ding-a-ling! ”

  “Which one of you shook the bell?”

  “We took turns. We’d trade off when our hands got tired. It was so weird, shaking this bell the whole time we were doing it! I think about it sometimes even now, when I’m having sex, and I start laughing.”

  Komura gave a little laugh, too.

  Shimao clapped her hands. “Oh, that’s wonderful,” she said. “You can laugh after all!”

  “Of course I can laugh,” Komura said, but come to think of it, this was the first time he had laughed in quite a while. When was the last time?

  “Do you mind if I take a bath, too?” Shimao asked.

  “Fine,” he said.

  While she was bathing, Komura watched a variety show emceed by some comedian with a loud voice. He didn’t find it the least bit funny, but he couldn’t tell whether that was the show’s fault or his own. He drank a beer and opened a pack of nuts from the minibar. Shimao stayed in the bath for a very long time. Finally, she came out wearing nothing but a towel and sat on the edge of the bed. Dropping the towel, she slid in between the sheets like a cat and lay there looking straight at Komura.

  “When was the last time you did it with your wife?” she asked.

  “At the end of December, I think.”

  “And nothing since?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Not with anybody?”

  Komura closed his eyes and shook his head.

  “You know what I think,” Shimao said. “You need to lighten up and learn to enjoy life a little more. I mean, think about it: tomorrow there could be an earthquake; you could be kidnapped by aliens; you could be eaten by a bear. Nobody knows what’s going to happen.”

  “Nobody knows what’s going to happen,” Komura echoed.

  “Ding-a-ling,” Shimao said.

  After several failed attempts to have sex with Shimao, Komura gave up. This had never happened to him before.

  “You must have been thinking about your wife,” Shimao said.

  “Yup,” Komura said, but in fact what he had been thinking about was the earthquake. Images of it had come to him one after another, as if in a slide show, flashing on the screen and fading away. Highways, flames, smoke, piles of rubble, cracks in streets. He couldn’t break the chain of silent images.

  Shimao pressed her ear against his naked chest.

  “These things happen,” she said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You shouldn’t let it bother you.”

  “I’ll try not to,” Komura said.

  “Men always let it bother them, though.”

  Komura said nothing.

  Shimao played with his nipple.

  “You said your wife left a note, didn’t you?”

  “I did.”

  “What did it say?”

  “That living with me was like living with a chunk of air.”

  “A chunk of air?” Shimao tilted her head back to look up at Komura. “What does that mean?”

  “That there’s nothing inside me, I guess.”

  “Is it true?”

  “Could be,” Komura said. “I’m not sure, though. I may have nothing inside me, but what would something be?”

  “Yeah, really, come to think of it. What would something be? My mother was crazy about salmon skin. She always used to wish there were a kind of salmon made of nothing but skin. So there may be some cases when it’s better to have nothing inside. Don’t you think?”

  Komura tried to imagine what a salmon made of nothing but skin would be like. But even supposing there were such a thing, wouldn’t the skin itself be the something inside? Komura took a deep breath, raising and then lowering Shimao’s head on his chest.

  “I’ll tell you this, though,” Shimao said, “I don’t know whether you’ve got nothing or something inside you, but I think you’re terrific. I’ll bet the world is full of women who would understand you and fall in love with you.”

  “It said that, too.”

  “What? Your wife’s note?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “No kidding,” Shimao said, lowering her head to Komura’s chest again. He felt her earring against his skin like a secret object.

  “Come to think of it,” Komura said, “what’s the something inside that box I brought up here?”

  “Is it bothering you?”

  “It wasn’t bothering me before. But now, I don’t know, it’s starting to.”

  “Since when?”

  “Jus
t now.”

  “All of a sudden?”

  “Yeah, once I started thinking about it, all of a sudden.”

  “I wonder why it’s started to bother you now, all of a sudden?”

  Komura glared at the ceiling for a minute to think. “I wonder.”

  They listened to the moaning of the wind. The wind: it came from someplace unknown to Komura, and it blew past to someplace unknown to him.

  “I’ll tell you why,” Shimao said in a low voice. “It’s because that box contains the something that was inside you. You didn’t know that when you carried it here and gave it to Keiko with your own hands. Now, you’ll never get it back.”

  Komura lifted himself from the mattress and looked down at the woman. Tiny nose, moles on the earlobe. In the room’s deep silence, his heart beat with a loud, dry sound. His bones cracked as he leaned forward. For one split second, Komura realized that he was on the verge of committing an act of overwhelming violence.

  “Just kidding,” Shimao said when she saw the look on his face. “I said the first thing that popped into my head. It was a lousy joke. I’m sorry. Try not to let it bother you. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  Komura forced himself to calm down and, after a glance around the room, sank his head into his pillow again. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The huge bed stretched out around him like a nocturnal sea. He heard the freezing wind. The fierce pounding of his heart shook his bones.

  “Are you starting to feel a little as if you’ve come a long way?” Shimao asked.

  “Hmm. Now I feel as if I’ve come a very long way,” Komura answered honestly.

  Shimao traced a complicated design on Komura’s chest with her fingertip, as if casting a magic spell.

  “But really,” she said, “you’re just at the beginning.”

  landscape with flatiron

  Junko was watching television when the phone rang a few minutes before midnight. Keisuke sat in the corner of the room wearing headphones, eyes half closed, head swinging back and forth as his long fingers flew over the strings of his electric guitar. He was practicing a fast passage and obviously had no idea the phone was ringing. Junko picked up the receiver.