South of the Border, West of the Sun

2

In high school I was a typical teenager. This was the second stage of my life, a step in my personal evolution—abandoning the idea of being different, and settling for normal. Not that I didn’t have my own set of problems. But what sixteen-year-old doesn’t? Gradually I drew nearer the world, and the world drew nearer to me.

By the time I was sixteen I wasn’t a puny little only child anymore. In junior high I started to go to a swimming school near my house. I mastered the crawl and went twice a week for lap swimming. My shoulders and chest filled out, and my muscles grew strong and taut I was no longer the kind of sickly kid who got a fever at the drop of a hat and took to his bed. Often I stood naked in front of the bathroom mirror, scrutinizing every nook and cranny of my body.

I could almost see the rapid physical changes right before my eyes. And I enjoyed these changes. I don’t mean I was thrilled about becoming an adult. It was less the maturing process I enjoyed than seeing the transformation in myself. I could be a new me.

I loved to read and to listen to music. I’d always liked books and reading, and my interest in these had been fostered by my friendship with Shimamoto. I started to go to the library, devouring every book I could lay my hands on. Once I began a book, I couldn’t put it down. It was like an addiction; I read while I ate, on the train, in bed until late at night in school, where I’d keep the book hidden so I could read during class. Before long I bought a small stereo and spent my time holed up in my room, listening to jazz records. But I had almost no desire to talk with anyone about the experience I gained through books and music I felt happy just being me and no one else. In that sense I could be pegged a stuck-up loner. I disliked team sports of any kind. I hated any kind of competition where you had to rack up points against someone else. I much preferred to swim on and on, alone, in silence.

Not that I was a total loner. I managed to make some close friends at school, a few, at least. School itself I hated. I felt as though these friends were trying to crush me all the time and I had to always be prepared to defend myself. This toughened me. If it hadn’t been for these friends, I would have emerged from those treacherous teenage years with even more scars.

After I started swimming, I no longer was so picky about the foods I ate, and I could talk with girls without blushing. I might be an only child, but no one gave it a second thought anymore. At least on the outside, it seemed I had freed myself from the curse of the only child.

And I made a girlfriend.

She wasn’t particularly pretty, not the type your mother would point out in the class picture as the prettiest girl in school. But the first time I met her, I thought she was rather cute. You couldn’t see it in a photo, but she had a straightforward warmth, which attracted people. She wasn’t the kind of beauty I could brag about. But I wasn’t much of a catch, either.

She and I were in the same class in junior year of high school and went out on dates often. At first double dates, then just the two of us. For whatever reason, I always felt relaxed with her. I could say anything, and she listened intently. I might just be blabbing away about some drivel, but from the expression on her face you’d have imagined I was revealing a magnificent discovery that would change the course of history. It was the first time since Shimamoto that a girl was so engrossed in anything I had to say. And for my part, I wanted to know everything there was to know about her. What she ate every day, what kind of room she lived in. What she could see from her window.

Her name was Izumi. Love your name, I told her the first time we talked. “Mountain spring,” it means in Japanese. Throw in an ax, and out would pop a fairy, I said, thinking of the fairy tale. She laughed. Izumi had a sister, three years younger than her, and a brother, five years younger. Her father was a dentist, and they lived–no surprise–in a single-family home, with a dog. The dog was a German Shepherd named Karl, after Karl Marx, believe it or not. Her father was a member of the Japanese Communist Party. Granted there must be Communist dentists in the world, but the whole lot of them could probably fit in four or five buses. So I thought it was pretty weird that it was my girlfriend’s father who happened to be one of this rare breed. Izumi’s parents were tennis fanatics, and every Sunday would find them, rackets in hand, heading off to the court. A Communist dentist tennis nut—what a weird combination! Izumi wasn’t interested in politics, but she loved her parents and would join them in a round of tennis every so often. She tried to get me to play, but tennis wasn’t my thing.

She envied me because I was an only child. She didn’t get along well with her brother or sister. According to her, they were a couple of heartless idiots she wouldn’t mind giving the old heave-ho. I always wanted to be an only child, she said, living as I please, with no one bothering me every time I turn around.

On our third date I kissed her. She was over at my place that day. My mother was out shopping, so we had the whole house to ourselves. When I brought my face near and touched my lips to hers, she just closed her eyes and was silent. I’d prepared a full dozen excuses, in case she got mad or turned away, but I didn’t need any of them. My lips on hers, I put my arms around her and drew her close. It was near the end of summer, and she had on a seersucker dress. It was tied at the waist, and the tie hung loosely behind her like a tail. My hand touched the latch of her brassiere. I could feel her breath on my neck. I was so excited my heart felt like it was going to leap right out of my body. My penis was ready to burst; it pushed against her thigh, and she shifted a bit to one side. But that was all. She didn’t seem upset.

We sat for some time on the sofa, holding each other tight. A cat was sitting on the chair across from us. It opened its eyes, looked in our direction, stretched, and went back to sleep. I stroked her hair and put my lips to her tiny ears. I thought I had to say something, but nothing came to me. I could barely breathe, let alone speak. I took her hand again, and kissed her once more. For a long time, the two of us were quiet.

After I saw her off at the train station, I couldn’t calm down. I went home and lay on the sofa and stared at the ceiling. My mind was in a whirl. Finally my mother came home and said she’d get dinner ready. But food was the last thing I could think about Without. a word, I went out and wandered around the town for a good two hours. It was a strange feeling. I was no longer alone, yet at the same time I felt a deep loneliness I’d never known before. As with wearing glasses for the first time, my sense of perspective was suddenly transformed. Things far away I could touch, and objects that shouldn’t have been hazy were now crystal clear.

When Izumi left me that day, she thanked me and told me how happy she was. She wasn’t the only happy one. I couldn’t believe a girl had actually let me kiss her. How could I not be ecstatic? Even so, I couldn’t be unreservedly happy. I was like a tower that had lost its base. I was up high, and the more I looked off in the distance, the dizzier I became. Why her? I asked myself. What do I know about her anyway? I’d met her a few times, talked a bit, that was it. I was jumpy, fidgety beyond control.

If it were Shimamoto, there would be no confusion. The two of us, with no words spoken, would be totally accepting of the other. No uncomfortable feelings, no unease. But Shimamoto was no longer around. She was in a new world of her own, and so was I. Comparing Izumi and Shimamoto was pointless. The door that led to Shimamoto’s world had slammed shut behind me, and I needed to find my bearings in a new and different world.

I was up until the light shone faintly through the eastern sky. I slept for two hours, took a shower, and went to school. I had to find Izumi and talk to her about what had happened between us. I wanted to hear from her lips that her feelings were unchanged. The last thing she’d said was how happy she was, but in the cold light of dawn it seemed more like an illusion I’d dreamed up. School ended without my getting a chance to talk to her. At recess she was with her girlfriends, and when classes were over she went straight home. Just once, when we were in the hallway changing classes, we managed to exchange glances. She beamed when she caught sight of me, and I smiled back. That was all. But in her smile I caught an affirmation of the previous day’s events. It’s all right, her smile seemed to tell me. Yesterday really did happen. By the time I was riding the train home, my confusion was gone. I wanted her, and my desire won out over any doubts.

What I wanted was clear enough. Izumi naked, having sex with me. But that final destination was still a long way down the road. There was a certain order of events one had to follow. To arrive at sex, you first had to undo the fastener of the girl’s dress. And between dress fastener and sex lay a process in which twenty—maybe thirty—subtle decisions and judgments had to be made.

First of all I had to get hold of some condoms. Actually, that step was a bit further down the chain of events, but anyhow I had to get my hands on some. Never know when I might need them. But I couldn’t just duck into a drugstore, plunk down some money, and waltz out with a box of condoms. I’d never pass as anything other than what I was—a high school junior—not to mention that I was too much of a coward to make the attempt. I could have tried one of the vending machines in the neighborhood, but if anyone caught me red-handed, I’d be up the proverbial creek. For three or four days, I turned this quandary over endlessly in my mind.

In the end, things worked out more easily than expected. I asked a precocious friend of mine, who was sort of our local expert on these matters. See, the thing is, I asked him, I’d like to get some condoms, so what should I do? No sweat, he deadpanned. I can get you a whole box. My brother bought a ton of them through a catalog. I don’t know why he bought so many, but his closet’s full of them. One missing box isn’t gonna kill him. Fantastic, I enthused. The next day he brought the condoms to school in a paper bag. I treated him to lunch and asked him not to breathe a word. No problem, he said. Of course he spilled the beans, told a couple of people I was in the market for condoms. These people told some others, and it made the rounds of the school until Izumi heard about it After school, she asked me to come up to the school roof with her.

“Hajime, I heard you got some condoms from Nishida?” she asked. The word condoms didn’t exactly roll off her tongue. She made it sound like the name of some infectious disease.

“Uh … yeah,” I admitted. I struggled to find the right words. “It doesn’t really mean anything. I just thought, you know, maybe it’d be better to have some.”

“You got them because of me?”

“No, not really,” I said. “I was just curious about what they were like. But if it bothers you, I’m sorry. I’ll give them back, or throw them away.”

We were sitting on a small stone bench in a corner of the roof. It looked like it might rain at any minute. We were all alone. It was completely still. I’d never known the roof to be so silent.

Our school was on a hilltop, and we had an unboken view of the town and the sea. Once, my friends and I filched some records from the Broadcast Club room and flung them off the roof–like Frisbees, they sailed away in a beautiful arc. Off toward the harbor they flew, happily, as if life were breathed into them for a fleeting instant. But finally one of them failed to get airborne and wobbled clumsily straight down onto the tennis court, where some startled freshman girls were practicing their swings. It was detention for us. That had been more than a year before, and now here I was in the same spot, being grilled by my girlfriend about condoms. I looked up at the sky and saw a bird etching a slow circle in the sky. Being a bird, I imagined, must be wonderful. All birds had to do was fly in the sky. No need to worry about contraception.

“Do you really like me?” Izumi asked me in a small voice.

“Sure I do,” I replied. “Of course I like you.”

Lips pursed, she looked straight into my face. She looked at me so long it made me uneasy.

“I like you too, you know,” she said after a while.

But, I thought.

“But,” she said, sure enough, “there’s no need to rush.”

I nodded.

“Don’t be too impatient. I have my own pace. I’m not that clever a person. I need lots of time to prepare for things. Can you wait?”

Once again I nodded silently.

“Promise?” she asked.

“I promise.”

“You won’t hurt me?”

“I won’t hurt you.”

She looked down at her shoes for a while. Plain black loafers. Compared to mine, lined up next to them, they were as tiny as toys.

“I’m scared,” she said. “These days I feel like a snail without a shell.”

“I’m scared too,” I said. “I feel like a frog without any webs.”

She looked up and smiled.

Wordlessly we walked over to a shaded part of the building and held each other and kissed, a shell-less snail and a webless frog. I held her close against me. Our tongues met lightly. I felt her breasts through her blouse. She didn’t resist. She just closed her eyes and sighed. Her breasts were small and fit comfortably in the palm of my hand, as if designed solely for that purpose. She placed her palm above my heart, and the feel of her hand and the beat of my heart became one. She’s not Shimamoto, I told myself. She can’t give me what Shimamoto gave. But here she is, all mine, trying her best to give me all she can. How could I ever hurt her?

But I didn’t understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair.