Pinball, 1973

5

In the apartment house I lived in as a student, nobody had a phone. I doubt whether some of us even had one measly eraser. All the same, out in front of the superintendent's apartment we'd stationed a low table lifted from the nearby elementary school, and on that sat a pink pay phone, the one and only telephone in the entire apartment house. So no one gave the least thought to switch-panels or what have you. It was a peaceful world in peaceful times.

There was never anybody in the superintendent's apartment, so whenever the phone rang, one of us residents would have to answer it, then run and call the person. Of course, when nobody felt like getting it (like at two in the morning, for instance), the phone would go unanswered. It would ring on and on (my highest count was thirty-two times), raging like an elephant that knew its time had come. Then it would die. Literally and truly, it would die. As the last ring trailed off down the hall into the night, a sudden hush would fall over the place. A disturbing, ominous hush. Everyone would be holding their breath under the covers of their futon thinking about the call that had died.

Phone calls in the dead of night never brought good news. Somebody would pick up the receiver, and would begin softly. "Can we not talk about this?... Can't you see, it's not like that.... So what, you say? That's just how it's gotta be, right? Guess I'm just tired. . . . Of course, I'm sorry and all that.... So you see... Like I get the picture, I get it, so just let me think it over a bit, okay?... I just can't find the words over the phone..."

Everybody was up to here in troubles, it seemed. Trouble fell like rain from the heavens, and we just couldn't get enough of it. We went around picking up the stuff and cramming our pockets full of it. Even now I can't figure out why we persisted in doing that. Maybe we mistook it for something else.

Sometimes we'd even get telegrams. Four o'clock in the morning a bike would pull up to the entrance, followed by footsteps tramping down the hall. Then there'd come a knock on someone's door. A pounding thud thud that always seemed to announce the arrival of the God of Death. Any number of people were cutting their lives short, going out of their heads, burying their hearts in the sludge of time, burning up their bodies with pointless thinking, making trouble for one another. Nineteen seventy was that kind of year. If indeed the human species was created to elevate itself dialectically, then that year had to have been some kind of object lesson.

* * *

I lived on the first floor next to the superintendent's apartment, and this girl with long hair lived upstairs by the stairwell. She was the house champion at receiving phone calls, and it somehow fell to me to be perpetually running up and down those fifteen slippery steps. And let me tell you, did she ever get all kinds of phone calls. Polite voices, officious voices, touchingly sad voices, overbearing voices, and they'd all be asking for her by name. I have long since managed to drive that name out of mind; I only remember it was a pathetically ordinary name.

She would always talk into the receiver in a low, tired monotone. A bare whisper of a voice you could hardly make out. She was pretty enough, I suppose, yet there was something dark and moody about her face. We'd pass on the street sometimes, but she'd never say a thing. She'd be walking with such an intense expression she might have been trudging down a path though the deepest jungle astride a white elephant.

* * *

She lived in the apartment house maybe half a year. The half-year from the beginning of autumn to the end of winter.

I'd answer the phone, climb the stairs, knock on her door, and call out, "Telephone!" Then, after a slight pause would come "Thanks." That's all I ever heard her say, "Thanks." But for that matter, I never said anything either except ''Telephone."

For me, it was a lonely season. Whenever I got home and took off my clothes, I felt as if any second my bones would burst through my skin. Like some unknown force inside me had taken a wrong turn somewhere, and was leading me off in some strange direction to another world.

The phone would ring. And I'd think, somebody's got something to tell somebody else. I almost never got calls myself. There wasn't anybody who'd have anything to say to me, at least not anybody I'd want to hear from.

Everyone had by then begun to live according to systems of their own making. If theirs were very different from mine, I'd get irritable; if they were too much alike, I'd get depressed. That's pretty much how it went.

* * *

The last phone call I took for her was at the end of winter. A bright, clear Saturday morning, the beginning of March. By "morning," I mean around ten o'clock, when the winter sun cast its clear light into every corner of my tiny room. I vaguely heard it ringing in my head as I lazed about, absently gazing down on the field of cabbages outside my bedside window. Patches of snow here and there on the dark black soil glistened like mirror-bright pockets of water. The last snow left by the last cold wave of the season.

Ten rings and no takers. The ringing stopped. Then not five minutes later it started again. Disgruntled, I threw on a cardigan over my pajamas, opened the door, and picked up the receiver.

"Miss ______, please," came a male voice. A flat, unmodulated voice; an utterly featureless voice you couldn't pin down if you tried. I improvised some reply, then slowly climbed the stairs to knock on her door.

"Telephone!"

"..... Thanks."

I returned to my room, stretched out on my bed and stared up at the ceiling. I heard her come downstairs and start talking in her usual dry whisper. It was a short call as hers went. Maybe fifteen seconds. There was the sound of her hanging up, then silence. Not even any footsteps.

Finally, after a longish pause, I heard the slow approach of footsteps, followed by a knocking on my door. Two knocks, time for one deep breath, then twice again.

On opening the door, I found her standing there in a bulky white sweater and jeans. For a second I thought I'd given her someone else's call, but she didn't say a word. She just stood there, arms folded tightly across her chest, shivering. She gave me this look – she might have been watching from a lifeboat as the ship went down. Or maybe it was the other way around.

"Can I come in? I could catch my death of cold out here."

Not knowing what to expect, I ushered her in and shut the door. She sat down in front of the heater, warming her hands as she gave the room the once-over.

"Awful empty room you've got here."

I nodded. It was practically empty. Just a bed by the window. Too big for a single, too small for a semi-double. Whatever it was, the bed wasn't something I'd bought for myself. A friend gave it to me. I really couldn't imagine why he'd give me a bed; I wasn't even that close to him. Hardly ever spoke to the guy. The son of a rich family from somewhere, he was beaten up in the school court-yard by louts from some other political faction, had his face kicked in with work boots, almost lost an eye, and withdrew from school. He was in convulsions the whole time I was walking him to the university infirmary, a real sorry sight. Some days later he said it was back home for him, and he gave me the bed.

"I bet you can't even fix yourself anything hot to drink," she said. I shook my head. I didn't have a thing. No coffee, no tea, no bancha. I didn't even have a kettle. Just one small saucepan I used every morning to heat water for shaving. She sighed and stood-up saying wait there, she'd be right back. She left the room, and five minutes later returned with a cardboard box under each arm. In the boxes were a half-year's supply of teabags and green tea, two boxes of biscuits, granulated sugar, a thermos pot, and a complete set of dishes, plus two Snoopy tumblers to boot. She plunked the boxes down on the bed, and boiled water for the thermos.

"How on earth do you manage to survive? You're practically Robinson Crusoe here!"

"No, it's not as much fun as that."

"I should think not."

I shut up and drank my hot tea.

"I'm giving you all this."

I choked on the tea. "You're what?"

"You had to answer so many of my phone calls. This is thanks."

"But what about you, don't you need this stuff?"

She shook her head repeatedly. "I'm moving tomorrow, so I won't be needing anything."

I gave the situation a silent moment's thought, but couldn't imagine what had happened.

"Good news? Bad news?"

"None too good, I'm afraid. I'm going to have to quit school and return to the old homefront."

The roomful of winter sunshine clouded over, then brightened again.

"But that's nothing you want to hear about. I don't even want to hear about it. Who'd want to use dishes from someone who left you with bad feelings, right?"

The next day, a cold rain fell from morning on. A fine rain, but it penetrated my raincoat and got my sweater wet all the same. The rain made everything dark and slick. The oversized trunk I carried, the suitcase she carried, her shoulder bag, everything. The taxi driver even growled, Would we be so kind as to not put the luggage on the seat?

The taxi was stuffy inside from the heater and cigarette smoke, and an old enka ballad crooned out of the car radio. A real oldie from the days of pop-up turn signals. Groves of leafless trees that might have just as well been undersea coral stretched out their damp branches from both sides of the road.

"You know, from the very first sight of it, I never did like the look of Tokyo," she said.

"Really?"

"The soil's too dark, the waterways are polluted, no mountains. How about you?"

"I never paid much attention to the scenery myself."

She let out a sigh and laughed. "You, I just know you're a survivor."

Her luggage safely deposited on the station platform, this was the part where she got to tell me many thanks.

"I can manage it from here, thanks."

"Where you heading?"

"Way up north."

"Cold, I bet."

"It's okay, I'm used to it."

As the train pulled away, she waved from the window. I raised my hand as far as my ear, but by that time the train had gone. I didn't know what to do with it, so I buried the hand in the pocket of my raincoat.

The rain continued on into the night. I bought two bottles of beer at the neighborhood liquor store, and poured myself a drink in one of the glasses I got from her. I felt as if my body was going to freeze clean through to the core. On the glass was a picture of Snoopy and Woodstock playing atop the doghouse, and over that, this caption:

HAPPINESS IS A WARM FRIENDSHIP

* * *

I woke up after the twins were sound asleep. Three AM. An unnaturally bright autumn moon shone through the window of the john. I sat down on the edge of the kitchen sink and drank two glasses of tapwater, then lit a cigarette on a burner of the stove. Out on the moonlit golf course, the autumnal droning of the insects overlapped in layers across the turf.

I picked up the switch-panel the twins had stood by the side of the sink, and looked it over. No matter how you turned the thing over, front or back, it was nothing but a meaningless piece of fiberboard. I gave up and put it back where I'd found it, brushed the dust off my hands, took a puff on my cigarette. Everything took on a blue cast in the moonlight. It made everything look worthless, meaningless. I couldn't even be sure of the shadows. I crushed out my cigarette in the sink and immediately lit a second.

I could go on like this forever, but would I ever find a place that was meant for me? Like, for example, where? After lengthy consideration, the only place I could think of was the cockpit of a two-seater Kamikaze torpedo-plane. Of all the dumb ideas. In the first place, all the torpedoplanes were scrapped thirty years ago.

I went back to bed and snuggled in between the twins. Their bodies, each tracing a gentle curve, their heads facing outward, breathing lightly, asleep. I pulled the blanket over me and stared up at the ceiling.