South of the Border, West of the Sun

10

The river flowed swiftly past cliffs, in places forming small waterfalls, in others coming to a halt in pools. The surface of these pools faintly reflected the weak sun. An old iron bridge downstream spanned the river. The bridge was so narrow one car could barely squeeze across it. Its darkened, impassive metal frame sank deep into the chilled February silence. The only people who passed over the bridge were the hotel’s guests and employees, and the people in charge of caring for the woods. When we walked over it we passed no one going the other way, and looking back, we saw no one. After arriving at the hotel, we had had a light lunch, then we crossed the bridge and walked along the river. Shimamoto had on a heavy pea coat, the collar turned up, and a muffler wrapped around her up to her nose. She had on casual clothes, good for walking in the mountains, much different from her usual attire. Her hair was tied in back, and she wore a pair of rugged-looking work boots. A green nylon shoulder bag was slung over one shoulder. Dressed like that, she looked just like a high school girl. On either side of the river, hard patches of snow remained. Two crows squatted on top of the bridge, gazing down at the river below, every once in a while releasing grating, scolding caws. Those shrill calls echoed in the leaf-blanketed woods, crossed the river, and rang unpleasantly in our ears.

A narrow, unpaved path continued along the river, a terribly silent, deserted path leading who knows where. No houses appeared beside the path, only the occasional bare field. Snow-covered furrows inscribed bright white lines across the barren land. Crows were everywhere. As if signaling their comrades down the line of our approach, the crows let out short, sharp caws as we passed. They stood their ground, not trying to fly away. From close proximity I could see their sharp, weapon-like beaks and the vivid coloring of their claws.

“Do we still have time?” Shimamoto asked. “Can we walk a little farther?”

I looked at my watch. “We’re okay. We should be able to stay here another hour.”

“It’s so quiet,” she said, looking around slowly. Every time she opened her mouth, her hard white breath drifted into the air.

“Is this river what you were looking for?”

She smiled at me. “It’s like you could read my mind,” she replied. And reached out with her gloved hand to grasp mine, also in a glove.

“I’m glad,” I said. “If we came all this way and you said this wasn’t the place, then what’d we do?”

“Hey, have more confidence in yourself. You’d never make that kind of mistake,” she said. “But you know, walking like this, just the two of us, I remember the old days. When we used to walk home together from school.”

“Your leg isn’t like it was, though.”

She grinned at me. “You seem almost disappointed.”

“Maybe so.” I laughed.

“Really?”

“I’m just kidding. I’m very happy your leg’s better. Just a bout of nostalgia, I guess.”

“Hajime,” she said, “I hope you understand how very grateful I am to you for doing this.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’s like going on a picnic. Except we took a plane.”

Shimamoto walked on for a while, looking ahead. “But you had to lie to your wife.”

“I guess so,” I said.

“And that couldn’t have been easy. I’m sure you didn’t want to lie to her.”

I didn’t know how to respond. From the woods nearby, a crow let out another sharp caw.

“I’ve messed up your life. I know I have,” Shimamoto said in a small voice.

“Hey, let’s stop talking about it,” I said. “We’ve come all the way here, so let’s talk about something more cheerful.”

“Like what?”

“Dressed like that, you look just like a high school girl.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I wish I were.”

We walked slowly upstream. For a while we proceeded in silence, concentrating on our walking. She couldn’t walk very fast but was able to handle a slow but steady pace. She held my hand tight. The path was frozen solid, and our rubber soles hardly made a sound.

Just as she had implied, if only we could have walked this way when we were teenagers, or even in our twenties, how wonderful that would have been! A Sunday afternoon, just the two of us strolling along a river like this … I would have been ecstatic. But we were no longer high school kids. I had a wife and children, and a job. And I’d had to lie to my wife in order to be here. I had to drive back to the airport, take the flight that arrived in Tokyo at six-thirty, then hurry back to my home, where my wife would be waiting for me.

Finally Shimamoto stopped, rubbed her gloved hands together, and gazed all around. She looked upstream, then downstream. On the opposite shore there was a range of mountains, on the left-hand side a line of bare trees. We were utterly alone. The hot-springs hotel, where we’d had lunch, and the iron bridge, lay hidden in the shadow of the mountains. Every once in a while, as if remembering its duty, the sun showed its face through a break in the clouds. All we could hear were the screeches of the crows and the rush of water. Someday, somewhere, I will see this scene, I felt. The opposite of déjà vu—not the feeling that I’d already seen what was around me, but the premonition that I would some-day. This premonition reached out its long hand and grabbed my mind tight. I could feel myself in its grip. There at its fingertips was me. Me in the future, grown old. Of course, I couldn’t see what I looked like.

“This spot will be all right,” she said.

“To do what?” I asked.

She smiled her usual faint smile. “To do what I’m about to do,” she replied.

We went down to the riverbank. There was a small pool of water, covered by a thin sheet of ice. On the bottom of the pool several fallen leaves lay still, like the bodies of flat dead fish. I picked up a round stone and rolled it in my hand. Shimamoto took off her gloves and put them in her coat pocket. She undid her shoulder bag, opened it, and removed a small bag made out of a pretty cloth. Inside the bag was an urn. She undid the fastening on the lid and carefully opened the urn. For a while she gazed at what was inside.

I stood beside her, watching, without a word.

Inside the urn were white ashes. Very carefully, so that none would spill out she poured the ashes onto her left palm. There was barely enough to cover her hand. Ash left after a cremation, I figured. It was a quiet windless afternoon, and the ash didn’t stir. Shimamoto returned the empty urn to her bag, stuck her index finger into the ash, put the finger to her mouth, and licked it. She looked at me and tried to smile. But she couldn’t. Her finger remained near her lips.

As she crouched by the river and scattered the ashes, I stood next to her, watching. In an instant the small amount of ash was carried away. She and I stood on the shore, gazing at the water. She stared at her palm, then finally brushed off the remaining ash and put on her gloves.

“Will it really reach the sea?” she asked.

“I think so,” I said. But I wasn’t sure. The ocean was a fair distance away. Perhaps the ash would settle somewhere. But even so, some of it would, eventually, reach the sea.

She took a piece of board that lay nearby and began digging in a soft spot of ground. I helped her. When we’d dug a small hole, she buried the urn wrapped in cloth. Crows cawed in the distance, observing our actions from beginning to end. No matter; look if you want to, I thought. We’re not doing anything bad. All we did was scatter some burned ash in the river.

“Do you think it will turn to rain?” Shimamoto asked, tapping the tip of her boot on the ground.

I looked at the sky. “I think it’ll hold out for a while,” I said.

“No, that’s not what I mean. What I mean is, will the child’s ashes flow to the sea, mix with the seawater, evaporate, form into clouds, and fall as rain?”

I looked up at the sky one more time. And then at the river flowing.

“You never know,” I replied.

We headed in our rental car back to the airport. The weather was deteriorating fast. The sky was covered with heavy clouds, no blue visible. It looked like it would snow at any minute.

“Those were my baby’s ashes. The only baby I ever had,” Shimamoto said, as if talking to herself.

I looked at her, then looked ahead. Trucks sprayed up muddy melted snow, and I had to turn on the wipers every once in a while.

“My baby died the day after it was born,” she said. “It lived just one day. I held it only a couple of times. It was a beautiful baby. So very soft … They didn’t know the cause, but it couldn’t breathe well. When it died it was already a different color.”

I couldn’t say a thing. I reached out my hand and placed it on hers.

“It was a baby girl. Without a name.”

“When was that?”

“This time last year. In February.”

“Poor thing,” I said.

“I didn’t want to bury it anywhere. I couldn’t stand the thought of it in some dark place. I wanted to keep it beside me for a while, then let it flow into the sea and turn into rain.”

She was silent for a long, long time. I kept on driving, not saying a word. She probably didn’t feel like talking, so I thought it might be best to leave her alone. But soon I noticed that something was wrong—her breathing sounded strange, a mechanical rasping. At first I thought it was the car engine, but then I realized the sound was coming from beside me. It was as if she had a hole in her windpipe and air was leaking out each time she took a breath.

Waiting for a signal to change, I looked at her. She was white as a sheet and strangely stiff. She rested her head against the headrest and stared straight ahead. She didn’t move a muscle, only from time to time would blink, as if forced to. I drove on for a little while and found a place to pull over—the parking lot of a boarded-up bowling alley. On top of the building, which looked like an airplane hangar, stood a billboard with a gigantic bowling pin on it. Alone in the huge parking lot, we seemed to be in some wilderness at the edge of civilization.

“Shimamoto-san.” I turned to her. “Are you all right?”

She didn’t answer. She just sat back against the seat, making that unearthly sound. I put my hand to her cheek. It was as cold as the scenery that surrounded us. Not a trace of warmth. I touched her forehead, but it showed no signs of fever. I felt like I was choking. Was she dying, right here and now? Her eyes were listless as I looked deep into them. I could see nothing; they were as cold and dark as death.

“Shimamoto-san!” I yelled out, but got no response. Her eyes were unfocused. She might not even be conscious. I had to get her to an emergency room, and fast. We’d definitely miss our plane, but there was no time to worry about that. Shimamoto might die, and there was no way I was going to let that happen.

When I started the car again, though, she was trying to say something. I cut the engine, put my ear to her lips, but couldn’t make out her words. They were less like words than wind whistling through a crack in a wall. Straining as hard as she could, she repeated her words again and again. Finally a single word came through. “Medicine.”

“You want to take some medicine?” I asked.

She gave a tiny nod. So slight a nod I might not have caught it. But it was all she could manage. I rummaged around in her coat pocket. Purse, handkerchief, key holder with a lot of keys, but no medicine. I opened her shoulder bag. Inside was a small packet of medicine, with four capsules. I showed her the capsules. “Is this it?”

Without moving her eyes, she nodded.

I pushed her seat back, opened her mouth, and placed one capsule inside. But her mouth was bone dry, and nothing would go down. I searched madly for a vending machine, but there was none. And we didn’t have time to go looking. The only source of water around was the snow. Thank God there was enough of that. I leaped out of the car, scooped up some clean snow under the eaves of the building, and put it in Shimamoto’s wool cap. Bit by bit I placed the snow in my mouth and melted it. It took a while to melt enough, and the tip of my tongue turned numb. I opened her mouth and let the water flow from mine into hers. Then I held her nose closed and forced her to swallow. She choked a little, but after I did this a couple of times, she was at last able to swallow the capsule.

I looked at the packet. Nothing was written on it not the name of the medicine, her name, directions. Strange, I thought considering that such information is usually provided so you won’t take a medicine by mistake, or so others will know what to do. I replaced the packet inside her bag and watched her for a while. I had no idea what kind of medicine it was, or what her symptoms were, but since apparently she carried the medicine around all the time, it must work. For her, at least this was not a totally unexpected attack.

Ten minutes later, some color began to return to her cheeks. I gently put my cheek to hers; warmth was flowing back. I sighed in relief and had her sit back in her seat. She wasn’t going to die, after all. I put my arms around her shoulders and rubbed my cheek against hers. Slowly, ever so slowly, she was returning to the land of the living.

“Hajime,” she whispered in a dry voice.

“Shouldn’t we go to a hospital? Maybe we should find the nearest emergency room,” I asked.

“No, we don’t need to,” she replied. “I’m fine. If I take my medicine, I’m okay. I’ll be back to normal in a few minutes. What we should worry about is whether we’re going to make that plane.”

“Don’t worry about that, for God’s sake. We’ll stay here until you feel better.”

I wiped her mouth with a handkerchief. She took the handkerchief in her hand and looked at it. “Are you always this kind to everybody?”

“Not to everybody,” I said. “To you I am. I can’t be kind to everyone. There are limits to my kindness; even to how kind I can be to you. I wish there weren’t; then I could do so much more for you. But I can’t.”

She turned to look at me.

“Hajime, I didn’t do this just so we’d miss the plane,” she said in a small voice.

Startled, I gazed at her. “Of course you didn’t! You don’t need to say that. You were feeling sick. It can’t be helped.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“No need to apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“But I’ve ruined your plans.”

I stroked her hair, leaned over and kissed her cheek. I was dying to hold her whole body close to me and feel its warmth. But I couldn’t. All I could do was kiss her cheek. It was warm, soft, and wet. “There’s nothing for you to worry about,” I said. “Everything will work out fine.”

By the time we reached the airport and returned the car, it was way past boarding time. Fortunately, though, our plane was delayed. It was still on the runway; the passengers were waiting in the terminal. We both breathed a sigh of relief. They’re servicing the engine, the person at the counter told us. We don’t know how long it will take, he said; we don’t have any more information. It had started to snow when we reached the airport; now it was really coming down. With all the snow, the flight might very well be canceled.

“What’ll you do if you can’t get back to Tokyo today?” Shimamoto asked me.

“Not to worry. The plane will take off,” I said. Not that I had any proof. The idea that it might very well not take off had me depressed. I’d have to come up with a great excuse. Why the heck was I all the way over in Ishikawa? Enough, I said to myself; let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. What I had to worry about now was Shimamoto.

“What about you?” I asked. “What’ll you do if we can’t get back to Tokyo today?”

She shook her head. “I’m fine,” she said. “The problem is you. You’ll be in hot water.”

“Maybe. But never fear—they haven’t said the flight’s canceled yet.”

“I knew something like this would happen,” she said as if to herself. “Whenever I’m around, nothing good ever happens. You can count on it. If I’m involved, then things go bad. Things are going smoothly, then I step in and wham! they fall apart.”

I sat on the bench in the airport lounge, thinking about the telephone call I’d have to make to Yukiko if the flight was indeed canceled. I mulled over possible excuses, but everything I came up with sounded lame. I’d gone out saying I was spending Sunday with the guys from the swimming club, then ended up being snowed in in Ishikawa. No way I could explain that. “When I left the house I was suddenly overcome by this strong desire to visit the Japan Sea, so I went to Haneda Airport,” I could tell her. Give me a break. If that’s the best I could manage, I might as well clam up. Or better yet maybe I could try the truth. Before long, I realized with a start that I was actually hoping we would be snowed in and the flight canceled. Subconsciously, I was hoping my wife would find out about my coming here with Shimamoto. I wanted to put an end to excuses, to lies. More than anything, I wanted to remain right where I was, with Shimamoto beside me, and let things take their course.

The airplane finally took off, an hour and a half late. Inside the cabin, Shimamoto leaned against me and slept. Maybe she just had her eyes closed. I put my arm around her shoulder and held her close. Sometimes it seemed she was crying. She was silent the whole time; the first words we spoke were just before the plane landed.

“Shimamoto-san, are you sure you’re all right?”

Nestled next to me, she nodded. “I’m fine. As long as I take the medicine. So don’t worry.” She leaned her head back against my shoulder. “But don’t ask me anything, okay? Why that happened.”

“Understood. No questions,” I said.

“Thank you very much for today,” she said.

“What part of today?”

“For taking me to the river. For giving me water from your mouth. For putting up with me.”

I looked at her. Her lips were right in front of me. The lips I had kissed as I gave her water. And once more those lips seemed to be seeking me. Slightly parted, with her beautiful white teeth barely visible. I could still feel her soft tongue, which I’d touched slightly as I gave her water. I found it hard to breathe, and I couldn’t think. My body burned. She wants me, I thought. And I want her. But somehow I held myself in check. I had to stop right where I was. One more step, and there would be no turning back.

I called home from Haneda Airport. It was already half-past eight. Sorry I’m so late, I told my wife. I couldn’t get in touch with you. I’ll be back in an hour.

“I waited for a long time. I went ahead and ate dinner. I made stew,” she said.

I gave Shimamoto a ride in my BMW, which I’d parked at the airport. “Where should I take you?” I asked.

“You can let me off in Aoyama. I can get back from there by myself,” she said.

“Will you be all right?”

She smiled broadly and nodded.

We rode in silence till I got off the highway at Gaien. I’d put a tape of a Handel organ concerto on, real low. Shimamoto held both hands neatly in her lap and looked out the window. It was Sunday evening, and the cars around us were filled with families returning from a day out. I shifted gears briskly.

“Hajime,” Shimamoto said as we approached Aoyama Boulevard. “I was thinking back then how nice it would be if the plane didn’t take off.”

I was thinking exactly the same thing, I wanted to tell her. But I said nothing. My mouth was dry, and words couldn’t come. I merely nodded and reached out for her hand. At the corner of Aoyama 1-chome, she told me to stop the car, and I let her out.

“May I come to see you again?” she asked me softly as she opened the door. “You can still stand being around me?”

“I’ll be waiting,” I said.

Shimamoto nodded.

As I drove away, I thought this: If I never see her again, I will go insane. Once she was out of the car and gone, my world was suddenly hollow and meaningless.