South of the Border, West of the Sun

5

My four years of college were pretty much a waste.

The first year, I was in a few demonstrations, even battled the police. I was out there with the student strikers and showed up at political rallies. I met some wild characters that way, but my heart was never in politics. Linking arms with strangers at demonstrations made me uneasy, and when we had to hurl rocks at the cops, I asked myself if this was really me. Was this what I wanted? I wondered. I couldn’t feel the requisite solidarity with the people around me. The scent of violence that hung over the streets, the powerful slogans of the day, soon lost their point. And the time Izumi and I had spent together grew more precious in my mind. But there was no going back. I’d bidden that world farewell.

Most of my classes were a complete bore. Nothing excited me. After a while, I was so busy with my part-time job that I hardly ever showed my face at school; luck alone allowed me to graduate in four years. When I was a junior, I had a girlfriend I lived with for half a year. But it didn’t work out. I hadn’t the foggiest idea what I wanted out of life.

The next thing I knew, the season of politics was over. Like a drooping flag on a windless day, the gigantic shock waves that had convulsed society for a time were swallowed up by a colorless, mundane workaday world.

Once I was out of college, a friend helped me get a job on the editorial staff of a textbook company. I got a haircut, shined my shoes, and bought a suit. It wasn’t much of a company, but jobs for literature majors being few and far between that year, and considering my lousy grades and lack of connections, I had to settle for what I could get.

The job was a total bore. The company itself wasn’t such a bad place to work, but editing school textbooks didn’t brighten my day one bit. At first I thought: Okay, I’ll do my best, try to find something worthwhile in it; and for half a year I worked my butt off. Give it your best shot, and something good’s bound to happen, right? But I gave up. No matter how you sliced it this wasn’t the job for me. I felt as if the end of my life was staring me in the face. The months and years would drop away one by one, with me bored out of my skull. I had thirty-three years till retirement, chained day after day to a desk, staring at galley proofs, counting lines, checking spelling. I’d get married to some nice girl, have some kids, the usual twice-a-year bonus the one bright spot in an otherwise tedious existence. I remembered what Izumi had once told me. “I know you’ll be a wonderful person when you grow up. There is something special about you.” It pained me every time I remembered. Something special about me, Izumi? Forget it. But I’m sure you know that now. Ah, what the hell, everyone makes mistakes.

Mechanically, I did the work assigned me, and I spent my free time reading or listening to music. Work is just a boring obligation, I decided, and when I’m not working, I’m going to use my time the best way I can and enjoy myself. So I never went out drinking with the guys from work. Not that I was a loner who didn’t get along with people. I just didn’t make the effort to get to know my officemates on a personal level. I was determined that my free time was going to be mine.

Four or five years passed in a flash. I had several girlfriends, but nothing lasted. I’d date one for a few months, and then start thinking: This isn’t what I want. I couldn’t find within these women something that was waiting just for me. I slept with a couple of them, but it was no big deal. I consider this the third stage of my life—the twelve years between my starting college and turning thirty. Years of disappointment and loneliness. And silence. Frozen years, when my feelings were shut up inside me.

I withdrew into myself. I ate alone, took walks alone, went swimming alone, and went to concerts and movies alone. I didn’t feel hurt or sad. I often thought of Shimamoto and of Izumi, and wondered where they were now, what they were doing. For all I knew, they might be married, even have children. I would have given anything to see them, to talk with them, even for an hour. With Shimamoto and Izumi, I could be honest I racked my brains wondering how to get back together with Izumi, how to see Shimamoto again. How wonderful that would be, I imagined. Not that I actually took steps to see that it came true. The two of them were lost to me forever. The hands of a clock run in only one direction. I started talking to myself, drinking alone at night. I was sure I would never get married.

Two years after I started work, I had a date with a girl who had a bad leg. One of the guys from work set me up on a double date.

“Something’s wrong with one of her legs,” he told me reluctantly. “But she’s cute and has a great personality. I know you’ll like her. And you won’t really notice the leg. She drags it a bit is all.”

“Hey, no problem,” I replied. Truth be told, if he hadn’t mentioned her bad leg, I would have turned him down. I was sick to death of double dates and blind dates. But when I heard about her leg, I somehow couldn’t refuse.

You won’t really notice the leg. She drags it a bit is all.

The girl was a friend of the guy’s girlfriend. They had been classmates in high school. She was on the small side, with decent looks. Hers was a subdued sort of beauty, reminding me of some small animal deep in the woods who seldom showed its face. The four of us went to a movie one Sunday morning and then had lunch together. She hardly said a word. I tried my best to draw her out, but it was no go. She just smiled. Afterward, we split from the other couple. She and I went to take a walk in Hibiya Park, where we had some coffee. She dragged her right leg, not the left like Shimamoto. The way she twisted it too, was different. Whereas Shimamoto rotated her leg slightly as she moved it forward, this girl pointed the tip sideways a bit and dragged it straight ahead. Still, their way of walking was remarkably similar.

She had on a red turtleneck sweater and jeans, and a pair of desert boots. She wore hardly any makeup, and her hair was in a ponytail. Though she said she was a senior in college, she looked younger. I couldn’t decide if she was just a quiet person or was nervous meeting someone for the first time. Maybe she just didn’t have anything to talk about. Anyway, I wouldn’t exactly characterize our initial interaction as conversation. The only fact I was able to drag out of her was that she was at a private college, majoring in pharmacology.

“Pharmacology, huh? Is it interesting?” I asked. We were in the coffee shop in the park, having a cup.

She blushed.

“Hey, it’s okay,” I said. “Making textbooks isn’t exactly the world’s most exciting activity. The world’s full of boring things. Don’t worry about it.”

She thought for a while and at long last opened her mouth. “It’s not that interesting. But my parents own a drugstore.”

“Could you teach me something about pharmacology? I don’t know the first thing about it For the past six years I don’t think I’ve swallowed a single pill.”

“You’re pretty healthy, then.”

“I don’t even get hangovers,” I said. “When I was a kid, though, I was pretty sickly. Took lots of medicine. I was an only child, so my parents were overprotective.”

She nodded, and stared into her coffee cup for a while. It was a long time before she spoke again.

“Pharmacology isn’t the most thrilling subject,” she began. “There’s got to be a million things more fun than memorizing the ingredients of different medicines. It isn’t romantic, like astronomy, or dramatic, like being a doctor. But there’s something intimate about it, something I can feel close to. Something down-to-earth.”

“I see,” I said. She could talk, after all. It just took her longer than most to find the right words.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” I asked.

“Two older brothers. One’s already married.”

“So you’re studying pharmacology because you’ll be taking over the family store?”

She blushed again. And was silent for a good long time. “I don’t know. My brothers both have jobs, so maybe I will end up running the place. But nothing’s decided. If I don’t feel like it, that’s okay, my father said. He’ll run it as long as he can, then sell it.”

I nodded, and waited for her to continue.

“But I’m thinking maybe I should take it over. With this leg, it’d be hard to find another job.”

So we talked and passed the afternoon together. With plenty of pauses, and long waits for her to continue. Whenever I asked her a question, she blushed. I actually enjoyed our talk, which for me at the time was a real accomplishment. Sitting there in the coffee shop with her, I felt something close to nostalgia well up in me. She began to feel like someone I’d known all my life.

Not that I was attracted to her. I wasn’t. She was nice, all right, and I enjoyed our time together. She was a pretty girl and, like my friend said, quite pleasant. But all these good points aside, when I asked myself if there was something in her that would bowl me over, that would zoom straight to my heart, the answer was no. Nada.

Only Shimamoto ever did that to me. There I was, listening to this girl, all the time thinking of Shimamoto. I knew I shouldn’t be, but there it was. Just thinking of Shimamoto made me shiver all over, all these many years later. A slightly fevered excitement, as if I were gently pushing open a door deep within me. Walking with this pretty girl with a bad leg through Hibiya Park, though, that kind of excitement, that all-over shivery feeling, was missing. What I did feel for her was a certain sympathy, and a calmness.

Her home—the pharmacy, that is—was in Kobinata. I took her back on the bus. We sat side by side, and she hardly said a word.

A few days later, my friend from work came over and told me the girl really seemed to like me. Next vacation, he said, why don’t the four of us go somewhere together? I made some excuse and bowed out Not that I minded seeing her again and talking with her. Actually, I really did want to have a chance to talk with her sometime. Under different circumstances we might have ended up good friends. But it started with a double date, and the point of double dates is to find a partner. So if I did ask her out again, I’d be taking on a certain responsibility. And the last thing I wanted was to hurt her. All I could do was refuse.

I never saw her again.