After the Quake Read online

  “What in the world—?”

  “Just say you understand,” Nimit said with the utmost gravity.

  “I understand,” Satsuki said.

  The old woman gave a gentle nod and spoke again to Satsuki.

  “The man is not dead,” translated Nimit. “He did not receive a scratch. It may not be what you wanted, but it was actually very lucky for you that he was not hurt. You should be grateful for your good fortune.”

  The woman uttered a few short syllables.

  “That is all,” Nimit said. “We can go back to the hotel now.”

  “Was that some kind of fortune-telling?” Satsuki asked when they were back in the car.

  “No, Doctor. It was not fortune-telling. Just as you treat people’s bodies, she treats people’s spirits. She predicts their dreams, mostly.”

  “I should have left her something then, as a token of thanks. The whole thing was such a surprise to me, it slipped my mind.”

  Nimit negotiated a sharp curve on the mountain road, turning the wheel in that precise way of his. “I paid her,” he said. “A small amount. Not enough for you to trouble yourself over. Just think of it as a mark of my personal regard for you, Doctor.”

  “Do you take all of your clients there?”

  “No, Doctor, only you.”

  “And why is that?”

  “You are a beautiful person, Doctor. Clearheaded. Strong. But you seem always to be dragging your heart along the ground. From now on, little by little, you must prepare yourself to face death. If you devote all of your future energy to living, you will not be able to die well. You must begin to shift gears, a little at a time. Living and dying are, in a sense, of equal value.”

  “Tell me something, Nimit,” Satsuki said, taking off her sunglasses and leaning over the back of the passenger seat.

  “What is that, Doctor?”

  “Are you prepared to die?”

  “I am half dead already,” Nimit said as if stating the obvious.

  That night, lying in her broad, pristine bed, Satsuki wept. She recognized that she was headed toward death. She recognized that she had a hard, white stone inside herself. She recognized that a scaly, green snake was lurking somewhere in the dark. She thought about the child to which she never gave birth. She had destroyed that child, flung it down a bottomless well. And then she had spent thirty years hating one man. She had hoped that he would die in agony. In order to bring that about, she had gone so far as to wish in the depths of her heart for an earthquake. In a sense, she told herself, I am the one who caused that earthquake. He turned my heart into a stone; he turned my body to stone. In the distant mountains, the gray monkeys were silently staring at her. Living and dying are, in a sense, of equal value.

  After checking her bags at the airline counter, Satsuki handed Nimit an envelope containing a one-hundred-dollar bill. “Thank you for everything, Nimit. You made it possible for me to have a wonderful rest. This is a personal gift from me to you.”

  “That is very thoughtful of you, Doctor,” said Nimit, accepting the envelope. “Thank you very much.”

  “Do you have time for a cup of coffee?”

  “Yes, I would enjoy that.”

  They went to a café together. Satsuki took hers black. Nimit gave his a heavy dose of cream. For a long time, Satsuki went on turning her cup in her saucer.

  “You know,” she said at last, “I have a secret that I’ve never told anyone. I could never bring myself to talk about it. I’ve kept it locked up inside of me all this time. But I’d like to tell it to you now. Because we’ll probably never meet again. When my father died all of a sudden, my mother, without a word to me—”

  Nimit held his hands up, palms facing Satsuki, and shook his head. “Please, Doctor. Don’t tell me anymore. You should have your dream, as the old woman told you to. I understand how you feel, but if you put those feelings into words they will turn into lies.”

  Satsuki swallowed her words, and then, in silence, closed her eyes. She drew in a full, deep breath, and let it out again.

  “Have your dream, Doctor,” Nimit said as if sharing kindly advice. “What you need now more than anything is discipline. Cast off mere words. Words turn into stone.”

  He reached out and took Satsuki’s hand between his. His hands were strangely smooth and youthful, as if they had always been protected by expensive leather gloves. Satsuki opened her eyes and looked at him. Nimit took away his hands and rested them on the table, fingers intertwined.

  “My Norwegian employer was actually from Lapland,” he said. “You must know, of course, that Lapland is at the northern-most tip of Norway, near the North Pole. Many reindeer live there. In summer there is no night, and in winter no day. He probably came to Thailand because the cold got to be too much for him. I guess you could call the two places complete opposites. He loved Thailand, and he made up his mind to have his bones buried here. But still, to the day he died, he missed the town in Lapland where he was born. He used to tell me about it all the time. And yet, in spite of that, he never once went back to Norway in thirty-three years. Something must have happened there that kept him away. He was another person with a stone inside.”

  Nimit lifted his coffee cup and took a sip, then carefully set it in its saucer again without a sound.

  “He once told me about polar bears—what solitary animals they are. They mate just once a year. One time in a whole year. There is no such thing as a lasting male-female bond in their world. One male polar bear and one female polar bear meet by sheer chance somewhere in the frozen vastness, and they mate. It doesn’t take long. And once they are finished, the male runs away from the female as if he is frightened to death: he runs from the place where they have mated. He never looks back— literally. The rest of the year he lives in deep solitude. Mutual communication—the touching of two hearts—does not exist for them. So, that is the story of polar bears—or at least it is what my employer told me about them.”

  “How very strange,” Satsuki said.

  “Yes,” Nimit said, “it is strange.” His face was grave. “I remember asking my employer, ‘Then what do polar bears exist for?’ ‘Yes, exactly,’ he said with a big smile. ‘Then what do we exist for, Nimit?’ ”

  The plane reached cruising altitude and the FASTEN SEAT BELT sign went out. So, thought Satsuki, I’m going back to Japan. She tried to think about what lay ahead, but soon gave up. “Words turn into stone,” Nimit had told her. She settled deep into her seat and closed her eyes. All at once the image came to her of the sky she had seen while swimming on her back. And Erroll Garner’s “I’ll Remember April.” Let me sleep, she thought. Just let me sleep. And wait for the dream to come.

  super-frog saves tokyo

  Katagiri found a giant frog waiting for him in his apartment. It was powerfully built, standing over six feet tall on its hind legs. A skinny little man no more than five-foot-three, Katagiri was overwhelmed by the frog’s imposing bulk.

  “Call me ‘Frog,’ ” said the frog in a clear, strong voice.

  Katagiri stood rooted in the doorway, unable to speak.

  “Don’t be afraid, I’m not here to hurt you. Just come in and close the door. Please.”

  Briefcase in his right hand, grocery bag with fresh vegetables and canned salmon cradled in his left arm, Katagiri didn’t dare move.

  “Please, Mr. Katagiri, hurry and close the door, and take off your shoes.”

  The sound of his own name helped Katagiri snap out of it. He closed the door as ordered, set the grocery bag on the raised wooden floor, pinned the briefcase under one arm, and unlaced his shoes. Frog gestured for him to take a seat at the kitchen table, which he did.

  “I must apologize, Mr. Katagiri, for having barged in while you were out,” Frog said. “I knew it would be a shock for you to find me here. But I had no choice. How about a cup of tea? I thought you would be coming home soon, so I boiled some water.”

  Katagiri still had his briefcase jammed under his arm. Somebody�
��s playing a joke on me, he thought. Somebody’s rigged himself up in this huge frog costume just to have fun with me. But he knew, as he watched Frog pour boiling water into the teapot, humming all the while, that these had to be the limbs and movements of a real frog. Frog set a cup of green tea in front of Katagiri, and poured another one for himself.

  Sipping his tea, Frog asked, “Calming down?”

  But still Katagiri could not speak.

  “I know I should have made an appointment to visit you, Mr. Katagiri. I am fully aware of the proprieties. Anyone would be shocked to find a big frog waiting for him at home. But an urgent matter brings me here. Please forgive me.”

  “Urgent matter?” Katagiri managed to produce words at last.

  “Yes, indeed,” Frog said. “Why else would I take the liberty of barging into a person’s home? Such discourtesy is not my customary style.”

  “Does this ‘matter’ have something to do with me?”

  “Yes and no,” said Frog with a tilt of the head. “No and yes.”

  I’ve got to get a grip on myself, thought Katagiri. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “Not at all, not at all,” Frog said with a smile. “It’s your home. You don’t have to ask my permission. Smoke and drink as much as you like. I myself am not a smoker, but I can hardly impose my distaste for tobacco on others in their own homes.”

  Katagiri pulled a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket and struck a match. He saw his hand trembling as he lit up. Seated opposite him, Frog seemed to be studying his every movement.

  “You don’t happen to be connected with some kind of gang by any chance?” Katagiri found the courage to ask.

  “Ha ha ha ha ha ha! What a wonderful sense of humor you have, Mr. Katagiri!” he said, slapping his webbed hand against his thigh. “There may be a shortage of skilled labor, but what gang is going to hire a frog to do their dirty work? They’d be made a laughingstock.”

  “Well, if you’re here to negotiate a repayment, you’re wasting your time. I have no authority to make such decisions. Only my superiors can do that. I just follow orders. I can’t do a thing for you.”

  “Please, Mr. Katagiri,” Frog said, raising one webbed finger. “I have not come here on such petty business. I am fully aware that you are assistant chief of the Lending Division of the Shinjuku branch of the Tokyo Security Trust Bank. But my visit has nothing to do with the repayment of loans. I have come here to save Tokyo from destruction.”

  Katagiri scanned the room for a hidden TV camera in case he was being made the butt of some huge, terrible joke. But there was no camera. It was a small apartment. There was no place for anyone to hide.

  “No,” Frog said, “we are the only ones here. I know you are thinking that I must be mad, or that you are having some kind of dream, but I am not crazy and you are not dreaming. This is absolutely, positively serious.”

  “To tell you the truth, Mr. Frog—”

  “Please,” Frog said, raising one finger again. “Call me ‘Frog.’ ”

  “To tell you the truth, Frog,” Katagiri said, “I can’t quite understand what is going on here. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but I don’t seem to be able to grasp the situation exactly. Do you mind if I ask you a question or two?”

  “Not at all, not at all,” Frog said. “Mutual understanding is of critical importance. There are those who say that ‘understanding’ is merely the sum total of our misunderstandings, and while I do find this view interesting in its own way, I am afraid that we have no time to spare on pleasant digressions. The best thing would be for us to achieve mutual understanding via the shortest possible route. Therefore, by all means, ask as many questions as you wish.”

  “Now, you are a real frog, am I right?”

  “Yes, of course, as you can see. A real frog is exactly what I am. A product neither of metaphor nor allusion nor deconstruction nor sampling nor any other such complex process, I am a genuine frog. Shall I croak for you?”

  Frog tilted back his head and flexed the muscles of his huge throat. Ribit! Ri-i-i-bit! Ribit-ribit-ribit! Ribit! Ribit! Ri-i-i-bit! His gigantic croaks rattled the pictures hanging on the walls.

  “Fine, I see, I see!” Katagiri said, worried about the thin walls of the cheap apartment house in which he lived. “That’s great. You are, without question, a real frog.”

  “One might also say that I am the sum total of all frogs. Nonetheless, this does nothing to change the fact that I am a frog. Anyone claiming that I am not a frog would be a dirty liar. I would smash such a person to bits!”

  Katagiri nodded. Hoping to calm himself, he picked up his cup and swallowed a mouthful of tea. “You said before that you have come here to save Tokyo from destruction?”

  “That is what I said.”

  “What kind of destruction?”

  “Earthquake,” Frog said with the utmost gravity.

  Mouth dropping open, Katagiri looked at Frog. And Frog, saying nothing, looked at Katagiri. They went on staring at each other like this for some time. Next it was Frog’s turn to open his mouth.

  “A very, very big earthquake. It is set to strike Tokyo at eight-thirty a.m. on February 18. Three days from now. A much bigger earthquake than the one that struck Kobe last month. The number of dead from such a quake would probably exceed a hundred and fifty thousand—mostly from accidents involving the commuter system: derailments, falling vehicles, crashes, the collapse of elevated expressways and rail lines, the crushing of subways, the explosion of tanker trucks. Buildings will be transformed into piles of rubble, their inhabitants crushed to death. Fires everywhere, the road system in a state of collapse, ambulances and fire trucks useless, people just lying there, dying. A hundred and fifty thousand of them! Pure hell. People will be made to realize what a fragile condition the intensive collectivity known as ‘city’ really is.” Frog said this with a gentle shake of the head. “The epicenter will be close to the Shinjuku ward office.”

  “Close to the Shinjuku ward office?”

  “To be precise, it will hit directly beneath the Shinjuku branch of the Tokyo Security Trust Bank.”

  A heavy silence followed.

  “And you,” Katagiri said, “are planning to stop this earthquake?”

  “Exactly,” Frog said, nodding. “That is exactly what I propose to do. You and I will go underground beneath the Shinjuku branch of the Tokyo Security Trust Bank to do mortal combat with Worm.”

  As a member of the Trust Bank Lending Division, Katagiri had fought his way through many a battle. He had weathered sixteen years of daily combat since the day he graduated from the university and joined the bank’s staff. He was, in a word, a collection officer—a post that carried little popularity. Everyone in his division preferred to make loans, especially at the time of the bubble. They had so much money in those days that almost any likely piece of collateral—be it land or stock—was enough to convince loan officers to give away whatever they were asked for, the bigger the loan the better their reputations in the company. Some loans, though, never made it back to the bank: they got “stuck to the bottom of the pan.” It was Katagiri’s job to take care of those. And when the bubble burst, the work piled on. First stock prices fell, and then land values, and collateral lost all significance. “Get out there,” his boss commanded him, “and squeeze whatever you can out of them.”

  The Kabukicho neighborhood of Shinjuku was a labyrinth of violence: old-time gangsters, Korean mobsters, Chinese mafia, guns and drugs, money flowing beneath the surface from one murky den to another, people vanishing every now and then like a puff of smoke. Plunging into Kabukicho to collect a bad debt, Katagiri had been surrounded more than once by mobsters threatening to kill him, but he had never been frightened. What good would it have done them to kill one man running around for the bank? They could stab him if they wanted to. They could beat him up. He was perfect for the job: no wife, no kids, both parents dead, brother and sister he had put through college married off. So what if they killed him? It
wouldn’t change anything for anybody—least of all for Katagiri himself.

  It was not Katagiri but the thugs surrounding him who got nervous when they saw him so calm and cool. He soon earned a kind of reputation in their world as a tough guy. Now, though, the tough Katagiri was at a total loss. What the hell was this frog talking about? Worm?

  “Who is Worm?” he asked with some hesitation.

  “Worm lives underground. He is a gigantic worm. When he gets angry, he causes earthquakes,” Frog said. “And right now he is very, very angry.”

  “What is he angry about?” Katagiri asked.

  “I have no idea,” Frog said. “Nobody knows what Worm is thinking inside that murky head of his. Few have ever seen him. He is usually asleep. That’s what he really likes to do: take long, long naps. He goes on sleeping for years—decades—in the warmth and darkness underground. His eyes, as you might imagine, have atrophied, his brain has turned to jelly as he sleeps. If you ask me, I’d guess he probably isn’t thinking anything at all, just lying there and feeling every little rumble and reverberation that comes his way, absorbing them into his body, and storing them up. And then, through some kind of chemical process, he replaces most of them with rage. Why this happens I have no idea. I could never explain it.”

  Frog fell silent, watching Katagiri and waiting until his words had sunk in. Then he went on:

  “Please don’t misunderstand me, though. I feel no personal animosity toward Worm. I don’t see him as the embodiment of evil. Not that I would want to be his friend, either: I just think that, as far as the world is concerned, it is in a sense all right for a being like him to exist. The world is like a great big overcoat, and it needs pockets of various shapes and sizes. But right at the moment Worm has reached the point where he is too dangerous to ignore. With all the different kinds of hatred he has absorbed and stored inside himself over the years, his heart and body have swollen to gargantuan proportions—bigger than ever before. And to make matters worse, last month’s Kobe earthquake shook him out of the deep sleep he was enjoying. He experienced a revelation inspired by his profound rage: it was time now for him, too, to cause a massive earthquake, and he’d do it here, in Tokyo. I know what I’m talking about, Mr. Katagiri: I have received reliable information on the timing and scale of the earthquake from some of my best bug friends.”