After the Quake Read online

  “Do you mind turning the volume up?” she asked.

  “Yes, Doctor, of course,” Nimit said, making it louder. The tune was “I Can’t Get Started,” in exactly the same performance she had heard so often in the old days.

  “Howard McGhee on trumpet, Lester Young on tenor,” she murmured, as if to herself. “JATP.”

  Nimit glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “Very impressive, Doctor,” he said. “Do you like jazz?”

  “My father was crazy about it,” she said. “He played records for me when I was a little girl, the same ones over and over, and he had me memorize the performers. If I got them right, he’d give me candy. I still remember most of them. But just the old stuff. I don’t know anything about the newer jazz musicians. Lionel Hampton, Bud Powell, Earl Hines, Harry Edison, Buck Clayton…”

  “The old jazz is all I ever listen to as well,” Nimit said. “What was your father’s profession?”

  “He was a doctor, too,” she said. “A pediatrician. He died just after I entered high school.”

  “I am sorry to hear that,” Nimit said. “Do you still listen to jazz?”

  Satsuki shook her head. “Not really. Not for years. My husband hated jazz. All he liked was opera. We had a great stereo in the house, but he’d give me a sour look if I ever tried putting on anything besides opera. Opera lovers may be the narrowest people in the world. I left my husband, though. I don’t think I’d mind if I never heard another opera again for as long as I live.”

  Nimit gave a little nod but said nothing. Hands on the Mercedes steering wheel, he stared silently at the road ahead. His technique with the steering wheel was almost beautiful, the way he would move his hands to exactly the same points on the wheel at exactly the same angle. Now Erroll Garner was playing “I’ll Remember April,” which brought back more memories for Satsuki. Garner’s Concert by the Sea had been one of her father’s favorite records. She closed her eyes and let herself sink into the old memories. Everything had gone well for her until her father died of cancer. Everything—without exception. But then the stage suddenly turned dark, and by the time she noticed that her father had vanished forever from her life, everything was headed in the wrong direction. It was as if a whole new story had started with a whole new plot. Barely a month had passed after her father’s death when her mother sold the big stereo along with his jazz collection.

  “Where are you from in Japan, Doctor, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “I’m from Kyoto,” answered Satsuki. “I only lived there until I was eighteen, though, and I’ve hardly ever been back.”

  “Isn’t Kyoto right next to Kobe?”

  “It’s not too far, but not ‘right next to’ Kobe. At least the earthquake seems not to have caused too much damage there.”

  Nimit switched to the passing lane, slipping past a number of trucks loaded with livestock, then eased back into the cruising lane.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Nimit said. “A lot of people died in the earthquake last month. I saw it on the news. It was very sad. Tell me, Doctor, did you know anyone living in Kobe?”

  “No, no one. I don’t think anyone I know lives in Kobe,” she said. But this was not true. He lived in Kobe.

  Nimit remained silent for a while. Then, bending his neck slightly in her direction, he said, “Strange and mysterious things, though, aren’t they—earthquakes? We take it for granted that the earth beneath our feet is solid and stationary. We even talk about people being ‘down to earth’ or having their feet firmly planted on the ground. But suddenly one day we see that it isn’t true. The earth, the boulders, that are supposed to be so solid, all of a sudden turn as mushy as liquid. I heard it on the TV news: ‘liquefaction,’ they call it, I think. Fortunately we rarely have major earthquakes here in Thailand.”

  Cradled in the rear seat, Satsuki closed her eyes and concentrated on Erroll Garner’s playing. Yes, she thought, he lived in Kobe. I hope he was crushed to death by something big and heavy. Or swallowed up by the liquefied earth. It’s everything I’ve wanted for him all these years.

  The limousine reached its destination at three o’clock in the afternoon. They had taken a break at a service area along the highway at precisely twelve o’clock. Satsuki had drunk some gritty coffee and eaten half a donut at the cafeteria. Her week-long rest was to be spent at an expensive resort in the mountains. The buildings overlooked a stream that surged through the valley, the slopes of which were covered in gorgeous primary-colored flowers. Birds flew from tree to tree emitting sharp cries. A private cottage had been prepared for Satsuki’s stay. It had a big bright bathroom, an elegant canopy bed, and twenty-four-hour room service. Books and CDs and videos were available at the library off the lobby. The place was immaculate. Great care—and a great deal of money—had been lavished on every detail.

  “You must be very tired, Doctor, after the long trip,” Nimit said. “You can relax now. I will come to pick you up at ten o’clock tomorrow morning and take you to the pool. All you need to bring is a towel and bathing suit.”

  “Pool?” she asked. “They must have a perfectly big pool here at the hotel, don’t they? At least that’s what I was told.”

  “Yes, of course, but the hotel pool is very crowded. Mr. Rapaport told me that you are a serious swimmer. I found a pool nearby where you can do laps. There will be a charge, of course, but a small one. I’m sure you will like it.”

  John Rapaport was the American friend who had made the arrangements for Satsuki’s Thai vacation. He had worked all over Southeast Asia as a news correspondent ever since the Khmer Rouge had run rampant in Cambodia, and he had many connections in Thailand as well. It was he who had recommended Nimit as Satsuki’s guide and driver. With a mischievous wink, he had said to her, “You won’t have to think about a thing. Just shut up and let Nimit make all the decisions and everything will go perfectly. He’s a very impressive guy.”

  “That’s fine,” she said to Nimit. “I’ll leave it up to you.”

  “Well then, I will come for you at ten o’clock tomorrow…”

  Satsuki opened her bags, smoothed the wrinkles in a dress and skirt, and hung them in the closet. Then, changing into a swimsuit, she went to the hotel pool. Just as Nimit had said, it was not a pool for serious swimming. Gourd-shaped, it had a lovely waterfall in the middle, and children were throwing a ball in the shallow area. Abandoning any thought of trying to swim, she stretched out under a parasol, ordered a Tío Pepe and Perrier, and picked up reading where she had left off in her new John le Carré novel. When she grew tired of reading, she pulled her hat down over her face and napped. She had a dream about a rabbit—a short dream. The rabbit was in a hutch surrounded by a wire-mesh fence, trembling. It seemed to be sensing the arrival of some kind of thing in the middle of the night. At first, Satsuki was observing the rabbit from outside its enclosure, but soon she herself had become the rabbit. She could just barely make out the thing in the darkness. Even after she awoke, she had a bad taste in her mouth.

  He lived in Kobe. She knew his home address and telephone number. She had never once lost track of him. She had tried calling his house just after the earthquake, but the connection never went through. I hope the damn place was flattened, she thought. I hope the whole family is out wandering through the streets, penniless. When I think of what you did to my life, when I think of the children I should have had, it’s the least you deserve.

  The pool that Nimit had found was half an hour’s drive from the hotel and involved crossing a mountain. The woods near the top of the mountain were full of gray monkeys. They sat lined up along the road, eyes fixed on the passing cars as if to read the fates of the speeding vehicles.

  The pool was inside a large, somewhat mysterious compound surrounded by a high wall and entered through an imposing iron gate. Nimit lowered his window and identified himself to the guard, who opened the gate without a word. Down the gravel driveway stood an old stone two-story building, and behind that was the long, narrow pool. Its
signs of age were unmistakable, but this was an authentic three-lane, twenty-five-meter lap pool. The rectangular stretch of water was beautiful, surrounded by lawn and trees, and undisturbed by swimmers. Several old wooden deck chairs were lined up beside the pool. Silence ruled the area, and there was no hint of a human presence.

  “What do you think, Doctor?” Nimit asked.

  “Wonderful,” Satsuki said. “Is this an athletic club?”

  “Something like that,” he said. “But hardly anyone uses it now. I have arranged for you to swim here alone as much as you like.”

  “Why, thank you so much, Nimit. You are an impressive man.”

  “You do me too great an honor,” Nimit said, bowing blank-faced, with old-school courtesy. “The cottage over there is the changing room. It has toilets and showers. Feel free to use all the facilities. I will station myself by the automobile. Please let me know if there is anything you need.”

  Satsuki had always loved swimming, and she went to the gym pool whenever she had a chance. She had learned proper form from a coach. While she swam, she was able to thrust all unpleasant memories from her mind. If she swam long enough, she could reach a point where she felt utterly free, like a bird flying through the sky. Thanks to her years of regular exercise, she had never been confined to bed with an illness or sensed any physical disorder. Nor had she gained extra weight. Of course, she was not young anymore; a trim body was no longer an option. In particular, there was almost no way to avoid putting on a little extra flesh at the hips. You could ask for only so much. She wasn’t trying to become a fashion model. She probably looked five years younger than her actual age, which was pretty damn good.

  At noon, Nimit served her ice tea and sandwiches on a silver tray by the pool—tiny vegetable and cheese sandwiches cut into perfect little triangles.

  Satsuki was amazed. “Did you make these?”

  The question brought a momentary change to Nimit’s expressionless face. “Not I, Doctor. I do not prepare food. I had someone make this.”

  Satsuki was about to ask who that someone might be when she stopped herself. John Rapaport had told her, “Just shut up and let Nimit make all the decisions and everything will go perfectly.” The sandwiches were quite good. Satsuki rested after lunch. On her Walkman she listened to a tape of the Benny Goodman Sextet that Nimit had lent her, after which she continued with her book. She swam some more in the afternoon, returning to the hotel at three.

  Satsuki repeated exactly the same routine for five days in a row. She swam to her heart’s content, ate vegetable and cheese sandwiches, listened to music, and read. She never stepped out of the hotel except to go to the pool. What she wanted was perfect rest, a chance not to think about anything.

  She was the only one using the pool. The water was always freezing cold, as if it had been drawn from an underground stream in the hills, and the first dunk always took her breath away, but a few laps would warm her up, and then the water temperature was just right. When she tired of doing the crawl, she would remove her goggles and swim backstroke. White clouds floated in the sky, and birds and dragonflies cut across them. Satsuki wished she could stay like this forever.

  “Where did you learn English?” Satsuki asked Nimit on the way back from the pool.

  “I worked for thirty-three years as a chauffeur for a Norwegian gem dealer in Bangkok, and I always spoke English with him.”

  So that explained the familiar style. One of Satsuki’s colleagues at a hospital where she had worked in Baltimore, a Dane, had spoken exactly this kind of English—precise grammar, light accent, no slang. Very clean, very easy to understand, and somewhat lacking in color. How strange to be spoken to in Norwegian English in Thailand!

  “My employer loved jazz. He always had a tape playing when he was in the car. Which is why, as his driver, I naturally became familiar with it as well. When he died three years ago, he left me the car and all his tapes. The one we are listening to now is one of his.”

  “So when he died, you became an independent driver-guide for foreigners, is that it?”

  “Yes, exactly,” Nimit said. “There are many driver-guides in Thailand, but I am probably the only one with his own Mercedes.”

  “He must have placed a great deal of trust in you.”

  Nimit was silent for a long time. He seemed to be searching for the right words to respond to Satsuki’s remark. “You know, Doctor, I am a bachelor. I have never once married. I spent thirty-three years as another man’s shadow. I went everywhere he went, I helped him with everything he did. I was in a sense a part of him. When you live like that for a long time, you gradually lose track of what it is that you yourself really want out of life.”

  He turned up the volume on the car stereo a little: a deepthroated tenor sax solo.

  “Take this music for example. I remember exactly what he told me about it. ‘Listen to this, Nimit. Follow Coleman Hawkins’ improvised lines very carefully. He is using them to tell us something. Pay very close attention. He is telling us the story of the free spirit that is doing everything it can to escape from within him. That same kind of spirit is inside me, and inside you. There—you can hear it, I’m sure: the hot breath, the shiver of the heart.’ Hearing the same music over and over, I learned to listen closely, to hear the sound of the spirit. But still I cannot be sure if I really did hear it with my own ears. When you are with a person for a long time and following his orders, in a sense you become one with him, like husband and wife. Do you see what I am saying, Doctor?”

  “I think so,” answered Satsuki.

  It suddenly struck her that Nimit and his Norwegian employer might have been lovers. She had no evidence on which to base such an assumption, merely a flash of intuition. But it might explain what Nimit was trying to say.

  “Still, Doctor, I do not have the slightest regret. If I could live my life over again, I would probably do exactly the same thing. What about you?”

  “I don’t know, Nimit. I really don’t know.”

  Nimit said nothing after that. They crossed the mountain with the gray monkeys and returned to the hotel.

  On her last day before leaving for Japan, Nimit took Satsuki to a nearby village instead of driving straight back to the hotel.

  “I have a favor to ask of you,” he said, meeting her eyes in the rearview mirror. “A personal favor.”

  “What is it?”

  “Could you perhaps spare me an hour of your time? I have a place that I would like to show you.”

  Satsuki had no objection, nor did she ask him where he was taking her. She had decided to place herself entirely in his hands.

  The woman lived in a small house at the far edge of the village—a poor house in a poor village, with one tiny rice paddy after another crammed in layers up a hillside. Filthy, emaciated livestock. Muddy, pockmarked road. Air filled with the smell of water buffalo dung. A bull wandered by, its genitals swinging. A 50cc motorcycle buzzed past, splashing mud to either side. Near-naked children stood lined up along the road, staring at the Mercedes. Satsuki was shocked to think that such a miserable village could be situated so close to the high-class resort hotel in which she was staying.

  The woman was old, perhaps almost eighty. Her skin had the blackened look of worn leather, its deep wrinkles becoming ravines that seemed to travel to all parts of her body. Her back was bent, and a flower-patterned, oversize dress hung limp from her bony frame. When he saw her, Nimit brought his hands together in greeting. She did the same.

  Satsuki and the old woman sat down on opposite sides of a table, and Nimit took his place at one end. At first, only the woman and Nimit spoke. Satsuki had no idea what they were saying to each other, but she noticed how lively and powerful the woman’s voice was for someone her age. The old woman seemed to have a full set of teeth, too. After a while, she turned from Nimit to face Satsuki, looking directly into her eyes. She had a penetrating gaze, and she never blinked. Satsuki began to feel like a small animal that has been trapped in a room with
no way to escape. She realized she was sweating all over. Her face burned, and she had trouble breathing. She wanted to take a pill, but she had left her bottle of mineral water in the car.

  “Please put your hands on the table,” Nimit said. Satsuki did as she was told. The old woman reached out and took her right hand. The woman’s hands were small but powerful. For a full ten minutes (though it might just as well have been two or three), the old woman stared into Satsuki’s eyes and held her hand, saying nothing. Satsuki returned the woman’s strong stare with her timid one, using the handkerchief in her left hand to mop her brow from time to time. Eventually, with a great sigh, the old woman released Satsuki’s hand. She turned to Nimit and said something in Thai. Nimit translated into English.

  “She says that there is a stone inside your body. A hard, white stone. About the size of a child’s fist. She does not know where it came from.”

  “A stone?” Satsuki asked.

  “There is something written on the stone, but she cannot read it because it is in Japanese: small black characters of some kind. The stone and its inscription are old, old things. You have been living with them inside you for a very long time. You must get rid of the stone. Otherwise, after you die and are cremated, only the stone will remain.”

  Now the old woman turned back to face Satsuki and spoke slowly in Thai for a long time. Her tone of voice made it clear that she was saying something important. Again Nimit translated.

  “You are going to have a dream soon about a large snake. In your dream, it will be easing its way out of a hole in a wall—a green, scaly snake. Once it has pushed out three feet from the wall, you must grab its neck and never let go. The snake will look very frightening, but in fact it can do you no harm, so you must not be frightened. Hold on to it with both hands. Think of it as your life, and hold on to it with all your strength. Keep holding it until you wake from your dream. The snake will swallow your stone for you. Do you understand?”