After the Quake Read online

  “But you can do it, Mr. Miyake?”

  “Sometimes I can, sometimes I can’t. Most of the time, I can. If I really put my mind to it, I pretty much can.”

  “You like bonfires, don’t you?”

  Miyake nodded. “It’s almost a sickness with me. Why do you think I came to live in this navel-lint nothing of a town? It’s because this place gets more driftwood than any other beach I know. That’s the only reason. I came all the way out here to make bonfires. Kind of pointless, huh?”

  Whenever she had the chance after that, Junko would join Miyake for his bonfires. He made them all year long except for midsummer, when the beach was full of people far into the night. Sometimes he would make two a week, and sometimes he would go a month without one. His pace was determined by the amount of driftwood that washed ashore. And when the time came for a fire, he would be sure to call Junko. Keisuke had an ugly jealous streak, but Miyake was the one exception. He would rib Junko about her “bonfire buddy.”

  The flames finally found their way to the biggest log, and now at last the bonfire was settling in for a long burn. Junko lowered herself to the sandy beach and stared at the flames with her mouth shut tight. Miyake adjusted the progress of the fire with great care, using a long branch to keep the flames from either spreading too quickly or losing strength. From his small pile of spare fuel, he would occasionally pick a length of driftwood and toss it in where it was needed.

  Keisuke announced that he had a stomachache: “Must’ve caught a chill. Think I just need a crap.”

  “Why don’t you go home and rest?” Junko said.

  “Yeah, I really should,” Keisuke said, looking sorry for himself. “How about you?”

  “Don’t worry about Jun,” Miyake said. “I’ll see her home. She’ll be fine.”

  “OK, then. Thanks.” Keisuke left the beach.

  “He’s such an idiot,” Junko said, shaking her head. “He gets carried away and drinks too much.”

  “I know what you mean, Jun, but it’s no good being too sensible when you’re young. It just spoils the fun. Keisuke’s got his good points, too.”

  “Maybe so, but he doesn’t use his brain for anything.”

  “Some things your brain can’t help you with. It’s not easy being young.”

  The two fell silent for a while in the presence of the fire, each lost in private thoughts and letting time flow along separate paths.

  Then Junko said, “You know, Mr. Miyake, something’s been kind of bothering me. Do you mind if I ask you about it?”

  “What kind of something?”

  “Something personal.”

  Miyake scratched his stubbly cheeks with the flat of his hand. “Well, I don’t know. I guess it’d be OK.”

  “I was just wondering if, maybe, you had a wife somewhere.”

  Miyake pulled the flask from the pocket of his leather jacket, opened it, and took a long, slow drink. Then he put on the cap, slipped the flask into his pocket, and looked at Junko.

  “Where did that come from all of a sudden?”

  “It’s not all of a sudden. I kind of got the feeling before, when Keisuke started talking about the earthquake. I saw the look on your face. And you know what you once told me, about how people’s eyes have something honest about them when they’re watching a fire.”

  “I did?”

  “And do you have kids, too?”

  “Yup. Two of ’em.”

  “In Kobe, right?”

  “That’s where the house is. I suppose they’re still living there.”

  “Where in Kobe?”

  “The Higashi-Nada section. Up in the hills. Not much damage there.”

  Miyake narrowed his eyes, raised his face, and looked out at the dark sea. Then he turned his eyes back to the fire.

  “That’s why I can’t blame Keisuke,” he said. “I can’t call him an idiot. I don’t have the right. I’m not using my brain any more than he is. I’m the idiot king. I think you know what I mean.”

  “Do you want to tell me more?”

  “No,” Miyake said. “I really don’t.”

  “OK, I’ll stop then. But I will say this. I think you’re a good person.”

  “That’s not the problem,” Miyake said, shaking his head again. He drew a kind of design in the sand with the tip of a branch. “Tell me, Jun, have you ever thought about how you’re going to die?”

  Junko pondered this for a while, then shook her head.

  “Well, I think about it all the time,” Miyake said.

  “How are you going to die?”

  “Locked inside a refrigerator,” he said. “You know. It happens all the time. Some kid is playing around inside a refrigerator that somebody’s thrown away, and the door closes, and the kid suffocates. Like that.”

  The big log dipped to the side, scattering sparks. Miyake watched it happen but did nothing. The glow of the flames spread strangely unreal shadows across his face.

  “I’m in this tight space, in total darkness, and I die little by little. It might not be so bad if I could just suffocate. But it doesn’t work that way. A tiny bit of air manages to get in through some crack, so it takes a really long time. I scream, but nobody can hear me. And nobody notices I’m missing. It’s so cramped in there, I can’t move. I squirm and squirm but the door won’t open.”

  Junko said nothing.

  “I have the same dream over and over. I wake up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat. I’ve been dreaming about dying slowly in pitch-blackness, but even after I wake up, the dream doesn’t end. This is the scariest part of the dream. I open my eyes, and my throat is absolutely dry. I go to the kitchen and open the refrigerator. Of course, I don’t have a refrigerator, so I ought to realize it’s a dream, but I still don’t notice. I’m thinking there’s something strange going on, but I open the door. Inside, the refrigerator is pitch-dark. The light’s out. I wonder if there’s been a power failure and stick my head inside. Hands shoot out from the darkness and grab me by the neck. Cold hands. Dead people’s hands. They’re incredibly strong and they start dragging me inside. I let out a huge scream, and this time I wake up for real. That’s my dream. It’s always the same. Always. Every little detail. And every time I have it, it’s just as scary as the last.”

  Miyake poked the big log with the tip of a branch and pushed it back in place.

  “It’s so real, I feel as if I’ve already died hundreds of times.”

  “When did you start having the dream?”

  “Way, way back there. So long ago I can’t remember when,” Miyake said. “I have had periods when it’s left me alone. A year… no, two years when I didn’t have it at all. I had the feeling things were going to be OK for me. But no. The dream came back. Just as I was beginning to think, I’m OK now, I’m saved, it started up again. And once it gets going, there’s nothing I can do.”

  Miyake shook his head.

  “I’m sorry, Jun, I really shouldn’t be telling you these dark stories.”

  “Yes you should,” Junko said. She put a cigarette between her lips and struck a match, inhaling a deep lungful of smoke. “Go on.”

  The bonfire was nearing its end. The big pile of extra driftwood was gone now. Miyake had thrown it all into the fire. Maybe she was imagining things, but Junko thought the ocean sounded louder.

  “There’s this American writer called Jack London,” Miyake began.

  “Sure, the guy who wrote about the fire.”

  “That’s him. For a long time, he thought he was going to die by drowning in the sea. He was absolutely sure of it. He’d slip and fall into the ocean at night, and nobody would notice, and he’d drown.”

  “Did he really drown?”

  Miyake shook his head. “Nope. Killed himself with morphine.”

  “So his premonition didn’t come true. Or maybe he did something to make sure it wouldn’t come true.”

  “On the surface, at least, it looks like that,” Miyake said, pausing for a moment. “But in a
sense, he was right. He did drown alone in a dark sea. He became an alcoholic. He soaked his body in his own despair—right to the core—and he died in agony. Premonitions can stand for something else sometimes. And the thing they stand for can be a lot more intense than reality. That’s the scariest thing about having a premonition. Do you see what I mean?”

  Junko thought about it for a while. She did not see what he meant.

  “I’ve never once thought about how I was going to die,” she said. “I can’t think about it. I don’t even know how I’m going to live.”

  Miyake gave a nod. “I know what you mean,” he said. “But there’s such a thing as a way of living that’s guided by the way a person’s going to die.”

  “Is that how you’re living?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure. It seems that way sometimes.”

  Miyake sat down next to Junko. He looked a little more wasted and older than usual. The hair over his ears was uncut and sticking out.

  “What kind of pictures have you been painting?” she asked.

  “That would be tough to explain.”

  “OK, then, what’s the newest thing you’ve painted?”

  “I call it Landscape with Flatiron. I finished it three days ago. It’s just a picture of an iron in a room.”

  “Why’s that so tough to explain?”

  “Because it’s not really an iron.”

  She looked up at him. “The iron is not an iron?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Meaning it stands for something else?”

  “Probably.”

  “Meaning you can only paint it if you use something else to stand for it?”

  Miyake nodded in silence.

  Junko looked up to see that there were many more stars in the sky than before. The moon had covered a long distance. Miyake threw the last piece, the long branch he was holding, into the fire. Junko leaned toward him so that their shoulders were just touching. The smoky smell of a hundred fires clung to his jacket. She took in a long, deep breath of it.

  “You know something?” she said.

  “What?”

  “I’m completely empty.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  She closed her eyes and, before she knew it, tears were flowing down her cheeks. With her right hand, she gripped Miyake’s knee as hard as she could through his chinos. Small chills ran through her body. He put his arm around her shoulders and drew her close, but still her tears would not stop.

  “There’s really nothing at all in here,” she said much later, her voice hoarse. “I’m cleaned out. Empty.”

  “I know what you mean,” he said.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I’m an expert.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Get a good night’s sleep. That usually fixes it.”

  “What I’ve got is not so easy to fix.”

  “You may be right, Jun. It may not be that easy.”

  Just then a long, steamy hiss announced the evaporation of water trapped in a log. Miyake raised his eyes and, narrowing them, peered at the bonfire for a time.

  “So, what should I do?” Junko asked.

  “I don’t know. We could die together. What do you say?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I’m serious.”

  His arm still around her shoulders, Miyake kept silent for a while. Junko buried her face in the soft worn-out leather of his jacket.

  “Anyhow, let’s wait till the fire burns out,” Miyake said. “We built it, so we ought to keep it company to the end. Once it goes out, and it turns pitch-dark, then we can die.”

  “Good,” Junko said. “But how?”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  “OK.”

  Wrapped in the smell of the fire, Junko closed her eyes. Miyake’s arm across her shoulders was rather small for that of a grown man, and strangely bony. I could never live with this man, she thought. I could never get inside his heart. But I might be able to die with him.

  She felt herself growing sleepy. It must be the whiskey, she thought. Most of the burning driftwood had turned to ash and crumbled, but the biggest piece still glowed orange, and she could feel its gentle warmth against her skin. It would be a while before it burnt itself out.

  “Mind if I take a little nap?” she asked.

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  “Will you wake me when the fire’s out?”

  “Don’t worry. When the fire goes out, you’ll start feeling the cold. You’ll wake up whether you want to or not.”

  She repeated the words in her mind: When the fire goes out, you’ll start feeling the cold. You’ll wake up whether you want to or not. Then she curled herself against him and dropped into a fleeting, but deep, sleep.

  all god’s children can dance

  Yoshiya woke with the worst possible hangover. He could barely open one eye; the left lid wouldn’t budge. His head felt as if it had been stuffed with decaying teeth during the night. A foul sludge was oozing from his rotting gums and eating away at his brain from the inside. If he ignored it, he wouldn’t have a brain left. Which would be all right, too. Just a little more sleep: that’s all he wanted. But he knew it was out of the question. He felt too awful to sleep.

  He looked for the clock by his pillow, but it had vanished. Why wasn’t it there? No glasses, either. He must have tossed them somewhere. It had happened before.

  Got to get up. He managed to raise the upper half of his body, but this jumbled his mind, and his face plunged back into the pillow. A truck came through the neighborhood selling clothes-drying poles. They’d take your old ones and exchange them for new ones, the loudspeaker announced, and the price was the same as twenty years ago. The monotonous, stretched-out voice belonged to a middle-aged man. It made him feel queasy, but he couldn’t vomit.

  The best cure for a bad hangover was to watch a morning talk show, according to one friend. The shrill witch-hunter voices of the showbiz correspondents would bring up every last bit left in your stomach from the night before.

  But Yoshiya didn’t have the strength to drag himself to the TV. Just breathing was hard enough. Random but persistent streams of clear light and white smoke swirled together inside his eyes, which gave him a strangely flat view of the world. Was this what it felt like to die? OK. But once was enough. Please, God, never do this to me again.

  “God” made him think of his mother. He started to call out to her for a glass of water, but realized he was home alone. She and the other believers had left for Kansai three days ago. It takes all kinds to make a world: a volunteer servant of God was the mother of this hangover heavyweight. He couldn’t get up. He still couldn’t open his left eye. Who the hell could he have been drinking so much with? No way to remember. Just trying turned the core of his brain to stone. Never mind now: he’d think about it later.

  It couldn’t be noon yet. But still, Yoshiya figured, judging from the glare of what seeped past the curtains, it had to be after eleven. Some degree of lateness on the part of a young staff member was never a big deal to his employer, a publishing company. He had always evened things out by working late. But showing up after noon had earned him some sharp remarks from the boss. These he could ignore, but he didn’t want to cause any problems for the believer who had recommended him for the job.

  It was almost one o’clock by the time he left the house. Any other day, he would have made up an excuse and stayed home, but he had one document on disk that he had to format and print out today, and it was not a job that anyone else could do.

  He left the condo in Asagaya that he rented with his mother, took the elevated Chuo Line to Yotsuya, transferred to the Marunouchi Line subway, took that as far as Kasumigaseki, transferred again, this time to the Hibiya Line subway, and got off at Kamiya-cho, the station closest to the small foreign travel guide publishing company where he worked. He climbed up and down the long flights of stairs at each station
on wobbly legs.

  He saw the man with the missing earlobe as he was transferring back the other way underground at Kasumigaseki around ten o’clock that night. Hair half gray, the man was somewhere in his mid-fifties: tall, no glasses, old-fashioned tweed overcoat, briefcase in right hand. He walked with the slow pace of someone deep in thought, heading from the Hibiya Line platform toward the Chiyoda Line. Without hesitation, Yoshiya fell in after him. That’s when he noticed that his throat was as dry as a piece of old leather.

  Yoshiya’s mother was forty-three, but she didn’t look more than thirty-five. She had clean, classic good looks, a great figure that she preserved with a simple diet and vigorous workouts morning and evening, and dewy skin. Only eighteen years older than Yoshiya, she was often taken for his elder sister.

  She had never had much in the way of maternal instincts, or perhaps she was just eccentric. Even after Yoshiya had entered middle school and begun to take an interest in things sexual, she would continue to walk around the house wearing skimpy underwear—or nothing at all. They slept in separate bedrooms, of course, but whenever she felt lonely at night she would crawl under his covers with almost nothing on. As if hugging a dog or cat, she would sleep with an arm thrown over Yoshiya, who knew she meant nothing by it, but still it made him nervous. He would have to twist himself into incredible positions to keep his mother unaware of his erection.

  Terrified of stumbling into a fatal relationship with his own mother, Yoshiya embarked on a frantic search for an easy lay. As long as one failed to materialize, he would take care to masturbate at regular intervals. He even went so far as to patronize a porn shop while he was still in high school, using the money he made from part-time jobs.

  He should have left his mother’s house and begun living on his own, Yoshiya knew, and he had wrestled with the question at critical moments—when he entered college and again when he took a job. But here he was, twenty-five years old, and still unable to tear himself away. One reason for this, he felt, was that there was no telling what his mother might do if he were to leave her alone. He had devoted vast amounts of energy over the years to preventing her from carrying out the wild, self-destructive (albeit good-hearted) schemes that she was always coming up with.