Hear the Wind Sing

38

The evening of my return to Tokyo, with my suitcase in hand, I peeked my head into J’s Bar. It wasn’t open yet, but J let me in and gave me a beer.

“I’m taking the bus back tonight.”

Facing the potatoes for the French fries, he nodded a few times.

“I’ll be sad to see you go. Our monkey business is finished,” he said as he pointed to the picture on the counter. “The Rat is sad, too.”

“Yeah.”

“Tokyo seems like a lot of fun.”

“Anyplace is the same as any other.”

“Perhaps. Since the Tokyo Olympics, I haven’t left this town even once.”

“You like this town that much?”

“You put it best: any place is as good as any other.”

“Yeah.”

“Still, after a few years go by, I’d like to go back to China one time. I’ve never been there even once…I think about it when I go down to the harbor and look at the ships.”

“My uncle died in China.”

“Yeah…lots of people died there. Still, we’re all brothers.”

J treated me to a few beers, and as a bonus he threw some French fries into a plastic bag and gave them to me to take.

“Thank you.”

“No big deal. Just something I felt like doing…hey, you kids grow up so fast. First time I met you, you were still in high school.”

I laughed and nodded and said goodbye.

“Take care,” J said.

On the bar’s calendar, the aphorism written under August 26th was:

“What you give freely to others, you will always receive in turn.”

I bought a ticket for the night bus, went to the pickup spot and sat on a bench, gazing at the lights of the town. As the night grew later, the lights started to go out, leaving only the streetlights and neon signs. The sea breeze blew over the faint sound of a steam whistle.

There were two station workers, one on each side of the bus door, taking tickets and checking seat numbers. When I handed over my ticket, he said,

“Number twenty-one China.”

“China?”

“Yeah, seat 21-C, it’s a kind of phonetic alphabet. A is America, B for Brazil, C for China, D for Denmark. You’ll be upset if you hear me wrong and end up in the wrong seat.”

Saying that, he pointed to his partner, who was in charge of consulting the seating chart. I nodded and boarded the bus, sat in seat 21-C, and ate my stillwarm French fries. Things pass us by. Nobody can catch them. That’s the way we live our lives.