South of the Border, West of the Sun

7

I got married when I was thirty. I met my wife one summer vacation while I was traveling alone. She was five years younger than me. I was walking along a road in the country, when all of a sudden it started raining. I ducked into the nearest place I could find to get out of the rain, and she and a girlfriend were already there. All three of us were soaked to the skin, and we soon fell into conversation while waiting for the rain to let up. If it hadn’t rained then, if I had taken an umbrella (which was entirely possible, since I seriously debated doing so before I left the hotel), I would never have met her. And if I hadn’t met her, I’d still be plugging away at the textbook company, still leaning against the wall in my apartment at night, alone, drinking, and babbling to myself. Makes me realize how limited our possibilities ever are.

Yukiko and I were attracted to each other from the start. Her friend was much prettier, but I had eyes for Yukiko only. An irrationally strong attraction pulled us together; I’d nearly forgotten what that kind of magnetism felt like. She lived in Tokyo too, so after our return we went out. The more I saw of her, the more I liked. She was, if anything, on the plain side, at least not the type to attract men wherever she went. But there was something in her face that was meant for me alone. Every time we met, I took a good long look at her. And I loved what I saw.

“Why are you staring at me?” she’d ask.

“‘Cause you’re pretty,” I’d reply.

“You’re the first one who’s ever said that.”

“I’m the only one who knows,” I’d tell her. “And believe me, I know.”

At first she didn’t believe me. But soon she did.

We’d always go to some quiet place and talk. I could tell her anything, up front, no holds barred. I could feel the weight of all I had lost those past ten years, all those years down the drain, bearing down on me. Before it was too late, I had to get some of it back. Holding Yukiko, I felt a nostalgic, long-gone thrill racing through me. When we said goodbye, I was lost once again. Loneliness pained me, silence had me exasperated. A week before my thirtieth birthday, after we’d been dating for three months, I proposed to her.

Her father was the president of a medium-size construction company, and a real character. He’d hardly been to school, yet was a go-getter—a bit too aggressive for my tastes. Still, I was impressed by his unique outlook on life. I’d never met anybody like him. He tooled around Tokyo in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes but never acted stuck-up. When I went to see him to ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage, he just said, “You’re not children anymore, so if you like each other it’s up to you.” I was not much of a catch, a nothing employee of a nothing company, but that didn’t faze him one bit.

Yukiko had an older brother and a younger sister. Her brother was vice president of the construction firm and was going to take over the family business. He wasn’t a bad sort but was overshadowed by his father. Of the three children, the younger sister, who was in college, was the most outgoing; she was used to getting her way. Come to think of it, she might have made a better president than her brother.

About half a year after I was married, Yukiko’s father asked me to come to see him. He’d heard from my wife that I wasn’t too thrilled working at a textbook company, and he wanted to know if I was planning to quit my job.

“I have no problem with quitting,” I said. “The problem is what I do after that.”

“How about coming to work for me?” he asked. “I’ll run you ragged, but the pay can’t be beat.”

“Well, I know I’m not cut out for editing textbooks, but I don’t think working in a construction firm’s my thing, either,” I said truthfully. “I appreciate the offer, but if I’m not suited for the work, the whole thing will end up being more bother than it’s worth.”

“You’re probably right. Shouldn’t force people to do what they don’t want to do,” he replied. It sounded as if he’d anticipated this answer. We were having a few drinks. His son hardly touched liquor, so sometimes the two of us would drink together. “By the way, my company has a building in Aoyama. It’s under construction, should be finished by next month. The location’s good, and it’ll be quite a place. It’s a little off the beaten path now, but the area’s going to grow. I was thinking maybe you could open some kind of store there. It’s company property, so I’ll have to take the going rate for the down payment and rent, but if you’d like to have a go at it, I can lend you as much as you want.”

I thought about it for a while. The possibilities were intriguing.

That’s how I came to open an upscale jazz bar in the basement of a brand-new building in Aoyama. I had worked at a bar in college, so I was familiar with the ins and outs of running a drinking establishment—the kind of drinks and food you should serve, the music and atmosphere, the sort of clientele to shoot for, etc. My father-in-law’s company handled the interior decorating. He brought over a first-rate interior design firm and had them go to it. Their price was surprisingly reasonable, and when the bar was finished, it was a sight to behold.

The bar was more successful than my wildest dreams, and two years later I opened a second one, also in Aoyama. This was a bigger place, featuring a live jazz trio. It took a lot of time and effort, not to mention a great deal of money, but I ended up with a popular, unique sort of club. I’d done a halfway decent job with the opportunity presented to me, and I finally felt able to relax for a moment. Not coincidentally, this was when my first child, a girl, was born. At first I used to help out behind the counter, mixing cocktails, but after opening the second place, I was too busy with the business end. I had to make sure everything went smoothly-negotiating prices, hiring, keeping records. What I liked best was seeing ideas that had sprung up in my head materialize into something real. I even threw in my two cents’ worth regarding the menu. Surprisingly, I wasn’t half bad at this kind of work. I loved the process of starting from scratch, creating something, seeing it through till it was absolutely perfect. It was my bar, my own little world. Think you could find this kind of happiness proofreading school textbooks? No way.

During the day I’d take care of all sorts of chores, then at night I’d make the rounds of my two bars, checking out the cocktails to see that they tasted all right, observing the customers’ reactions, making sure my employees were up to snuff. And I listened to the music. Each month, I paid back some of what I owed my father-in-law; still, I was making a pretty decent profit. Yukiko and I bought a four-bedroom condo in Aoyama and a BMW 320. And had a second child. Another girl. Before I knew what hit me, I was the father of two little girls.

When I turned thirty-six, I bought a small cottage in Hakone and a red Jeep Cherokee for Yukiko, to shop and ferry the kids around. With the profit from my bars I could have opened a third place, but I didn’t plan to expand. Keeping track of all the details of two places was enough; watching over any more would leave me wasted. I was sacrificing enough time to work as it was. I discussed this with my wife’s father, and he suggested I put any extra money into stocks and real estate. It takes hardly any time or effort, he told me. But I knew absolutely zilch about the stock market or real estate. So he said, “Leave the details to me. If you just do as I say, you’ll wind up doing okay. There’s a knack to these kinds of things.” So I invested as he told me to. And sure enough, in a short time I’d racked up a healthy profit.

“Now you get it, right?” he asked me. “There’s a special knack to investing. You could work for a hundred years in a company and never end up doing this well. In order to succeed, you need luck and brains. Those are the basics. But that’s not enough. You need capital. Not enough capital, and your hands are tied. But above all, you need the knack. Without it, all those other things will get you nowhere.”

“Guess you’re right,” I said. I knew what he was getting at. The “knack” he spoke of was the system he’d created. A tenacious, complex system for generating vast sums of money by creating an immense network of contacts, gathering vital information, and investing accordingly. Slipping through the net of laws and taxes, transfiguring itself in the process, the profit thus generated swelled almost beyond measure.

If I hadn’t met my father-in-law, I’d still be editing textbooks. Still living in a crummy little apartment in Nishiogikubo, still driving a used Toyota Corona with an air conditioner on the blink. Now, though, in a short space of time I found myself the owner of two bars in one of the snazziest parts of town, the boss of more than thirty people, and making more money than I’d ever made in my life—or ever dreamed of making. The business was running so well my accountant was impressed, and the bars had a good reputation. I’m not saying I’m the only one who could have done it. Take away my father-in-law’s capital and his “knack,” and I’d never have gotten off the ground.

But I wasn’t entirely comfortable with this arrangement. I felt I was taking a dishonest shortcut, using unfair means to get to where I was. After all, I was part of the late-sixties–early-seventies generation that spawned the radical student movement. Our generation was the first to yell out a resounding “No!” to the logic of late capitalism, which had devoured any remaining postwar ideals. It was like the outbreak of a fever just as the country stood at a crucial turning point And here I was, myself swallowed up by the very same capitalist logic, savoring Schubert’s Winterreise as I lounged in my BMW, waiting for the signal to change at an intersection in ritzy Aoyama. I was living someone else’s life, not my own. How much of this person I called myself was really me? And how much was not? These hands clutching the steering wheel—what percentage of them could I really call my own? The scenery outside—how much of it was real? The more I thought about it, the less I seemed to understand.

Not that I was unhappy. I had no complaints. Yukiko was a gentle, considerate woman, and I loved her. When she gained a bit of weight after giving birth, she started dieting and exercising seriously. A little weight didn’t bother me, though—I still thought she was beautiful. I loved to be with her, and I loved to sleep with her. Something about her soothed me. No matter what, I’d be damned if I’d ever return to the kind of life I had in my twenties—days of loneliness and isolation. This was where I belonged. Here was where I was loved and protected. And where I could love and protect others—my wife and my children—back. Being in such a position was an unexpected discovery, a totally new experience.

Every morning, I drove my older daughter to her private nursery school, the two of us singing along to a tape of children’s songs on the car stereo. Then, before heading out to the small office I rented nearby, I’d play for a while with my younger daughter. In the summer, we’d spend weekends at our cottage in Hakone, watching the fireworks, boating around the lake, and strolling in the hills.

While my wife was pregnant I’d had a few flings, but nothing serious. I never slept with any one woman more than once or twice. Okay, three times, tops. I never felt I was having an affair with a capital A. I just wanted someone to sleep with, the same thing my partners were after. Avoiding entanglements, I chose my bedmates with care. Maybe I was testing something by sleeping with them. Trying to see what I could find in them, and what they could find in me.

Shortly after our first child was born, a postcard came, forwarded to me from my parents’ home. It was a notice of a funeral, with a woman’s name on it. She’d died when she was thirty-six. But I couldn’t place the name. The card was postmarked Nagoya. I didn’t know a soul in Nagoya. After a while, though, I realized who the woman was: Izumi’s cousin who used to live in Kyoto. I’d completely forgotten her name. Her parents’ home, it turned out, was in Nagoya.

It didn’t take much to figure out that Izumi herself had sent the card to me. No one else would have. At first, though, her reason was a mystery. But after reading it over several times, I could sense the unforgiving coldness that had gone into it. Izumi never forgot what I had done, and never forgave me. She must have been living a miserable life—a contented woman would never have sent that card. Or if she did, she would have written a word or two of explanation.

The cousin and everything about her came rushing back to me. Her room, her body, the passionate sex we shared. But the total clarity these memories once had for me was gone, like smoke blown away on the wind. I couldn’t imagine why she had died. Thirty-six is such an unnatural age to die. Her last name was the same as before, which meant she never married—or had and divorced.

I found out more about Izumi and her whereabouts from an old high school classmate of mine. He’d read a “Tokyo Bar Guide” feature in the magazine Brutus, seen my photo in the spread, and learned that I was running the two bars in Aoyama. One evening he came over to where I was sitting at the counter and said, Hey, man, how’s it going? No implication that he’d gone out of his way to see me. He just happened to be drinking with some of his buddies and came over to say hi.

“I’ve been to this bar many times,” he said. “It’s near my office. But I had no idea you were the owner. What a small world.”

In high school I was sort of the outsider, but he had good grades, played sports, and was the type you’d find in student government. He was a pleasant sort, never pushy. An altogether nice guy. He was on the soccer team and had been big to begin with, but now he’d put on a bit of a spread: a double chin, his three-piece suit straining at the seams. All due to entertaining clients all the time, he explained. Big companies are hell on wheels, he said. You’ve got overtime, entertaining clients, job transfers; do a bad job and they kick your butt, meet your quota and they’ll up and raise it. Not the kind of thing decent people should be into. His office, it turned out, was in Aoyama 1-chome, just down the street.

We talked about things you’d expect classmates to talk about when they hadn’t seen each other for eighteen years—our jobs, marriage, how many kids we had, mutual acquaintances we’d run into. That’s when he mentioned Izumi.

“There was a girl you were going out with then. You were always together. Something-or-other Ohara.”

“Izumi Ohara,” I said.

“Right, right,” he said. “Izumi Ohara. You know, I ran into her not long ago.”

“In Tokyo?” I asked, startled.

“No, not in Tokyo. In Toyohashi.”

“Toyohashi?” I said, even more surprised. “You mean Toyohashi in Aichi Prefecture?”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t get it. Why did you meet Izumi in Toyohashi? What in the world would she be doing there?”

It seemed he caught something hard and unyielding in my voice. “I don’t know why,” he ventured. “I just saw her there. But there’s not much to tell. I’m not even completely sure it was her.”

He ordered another Wild Turkey on the rocks. I was drinking a vodka gimlet.

“I don’t care if there’s not much to tell. I want to know.”

“Well …” He hesitated. “What I mean is, sometimes I feel like it didn’t actually take place. It’s a spooky feeling, like I was dreaming but it was real, you know? It’s hard to explain.”

“But it really did happen, right?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“Then tell me.”

He gave a nod of resignation and took a sip of his Wild Turkey.

“I went to Toyohashi because my younger sister lives there. I was on a business trip to Nagoya, and it was a Friday, so I decided to go over to her place to spend the night. And that’s where I met Izumi. She was in the elevator of my sister’s apartment building. I was thinking: Wow, this woman’s the spitting image of that Ohara girl. But then I thought: No way, can’t be. No way I’d meet her in an elevator in my sister’s apartment building, in Toyohashi of all places. Her face looked different from before. I don’t understand, myself, why I soon realized it was her. Instinct I guess.”

“But it was Izumi, right?”

He nodded. “She happened to live on the same floor as my sister. We got off together and walked down the corridor in the same direction. She went into the apartment two doors before my sister’s. I was curious and checked out the nameplate on her door. Ohara, it said.”

“Did she notice you?”

He shook his head. “We were in the same class, but we never really talked. And besides, I’ve put on over forty pounds since then. She’d never recognize me.”

“But was it really Izumi? I wonder. Ohara’s a pretty common name. And there must be other people who look like her.”

“Yeah, I was wondering the same thing, so I asked my sister. About what kind of person this Ohara was. My sister showed me the list of tenants’ names. You know, those lists they make up when they’ve got to divide the cost of repainting or something. All the tenants’ names were on it And there it was—Izumi Ohara. With Izumi in katakana, not Chinese characters. There can’t be that many with the same combination, right?”

“Which means she’s still single.”

“My sister didn’t know anything about that,” he said. “Izumi Ohara is the apartment house’s mystery woman, I found out. No one had ever spoken with her. If you say hello to her as you pass in the corridor, she ignores you. She doesn’t answer the bell when you ring. Not exactly about to be voted Most Popular on the Block.”

“That can’t be her.” I laughed and shook my head. “Izumi isn’t that kind of person. She was always outgoing, always smiling.”

“Okay. Maybe you’re right. Maybe it was someone else,” he said. “Someone with exactly the same name. Let’s change the subject.”

“But the Izumi Ohara there was living alone?”

“I think so. Nobody’s ever seen any men go into her place. Nobody has a clue what she does for a living. It’s a complete riddle.”

“Well, what do you think?”

“‘Bout what?”

“About her. About this Izumi Ohara who may or may not be someone with the same name. You saw her face in the elevator. What did you think? Did she look all right?”

He pondered that. “All right, I suppose,” he answered.

“How do you mean, all right?”

He shook his whiskey glass; it made a clinking sound. “Naturally, she’s aged a bit. She’s thirty-six, after all. You and me too. Your metabolism slows down. You put on a few pounds. Can’t be a high school student forever.”

“Agreed,” I said.

“Why don’t we change the subject? It must have been somebody else.”

I sighed. Resting both arms on the counter, I looked him straight in the face. “Look, I want to know. I have to know. Just before we left high school, Izumi and I broke up. It was ugly. I screwed up and hurt her a lot. Since then, I’ve never had a way of finding out how she is. I had no idea where she was or what she was doing. So just tell me the unvarnished truth. It was Izumi, wasn’t it?”

He nodded. “If you put it that way, yes, it was definitely her. I’m sorry to have to tell you, though.”

“So, honestly, how was she?”

He was silent for a while. “First of all, I want you to realize something, okay? I was in the same class as her and thought she was pretty attractive. She was a nice girl. Nice personality, cute. Not a raving beauty but, you know, appealing. Am I right?”

I nodded.

“You really want me to tell the truth?”

“Go ahead,” I said.

“You’re not going to like this.”

“I don’t care. Just tell me the truth.”

He took another mouthful of whiskey. “I was jealous of you, always together with her. I wanted a girlfriend like that too. Now I can let it all out, I suppose. I never forgot her. Her face was engraved on my memory. That’s why, running into her out of the blue in an elevator—even eighteen years later?I knew right away. What I’m getting at is this: I have no reason to want to say anything bad about her. It was a shock for me too, you know. I didn’t want to admit it was true. Let me put it this way: She’s no longer attractive.”

I bit my lip. “What do you mean?”

“Most of the kids who live in that apartment building are afraid of her.”

“Afraid?” I repeated. I looked at him, uncomprehending. He must have chosen the wrong words. “What do you mean—afraid of her?”

“Hey, how about we call it a wrap? I didn’t really want to get into this anyway.”

“Wait a second—what does she do? Does she say things to the kids?”

“She doesn’t say anything to anybody. Like I said before.”

“So kids are afraid of her face?”

“That’s right,” he said.

“Does she have a scar or something?”

“No scars.”

“Well, then, what are they afraid of?”

He finished his whiskey and placed the glass on the counter. And looked at me for a good long time. He appeared flustered and more than a little confused. But something else was in his expression. I could catch a trace of his face as it was back in high school. He looked up for a while, staring off into the distance as if watching a stream flowing off and away. Finally he spoke. “I can’t explain it well; besides, I don’t want to. So don’t ask me any more, okay? You’d have to see it with your own eyes to understand. Someone who hasn’t actually seen it won’t understand anyway.”

I nodded, saying nothing more, just sipping at my vodka gimlet. His tone was calm, but any further inquiries I knew he would turn down point-blank.

He started to talk about the two years he worked in Brazil. You won’t believe it, he said, but I ran across one of my junior high classmates in São Paulo, of all places. Working at Toyota as an engineer.

His words blew right by me. When he left, he clapped me on the shoulder. “Well, the years change people in many ways, right? I have no idea what went on between you and her back then. But whatever it was, it wasn’t your fault. To some degree or other, everyone has that kind of experience. Even me. No joke. I went through the same thing. But there’s nothing you can do about it. Another person’s life is that person’s life. You can’t take responsibility. It’s like we’re living in a desert. You just have to get used to it Did you see that Disney film in elementary school–The Living Desert?”

“Yeah,” I answered.

“Our world’s exactly the same. Rain falls and the flowers bloom. No rain, they wither up. Bugs are eaten by lizards, lizards are eaten by birds. But in the end, every one of them dies. They die and dry up. One generation dies, and the next one takes over. That’s how it goes. Lots of different ways to live. And lots of different ways to die. But in the end that doesn’t make a bit of difference. All that remains is a desert.”

He went home, and I sat alone at the counter, drinking. After the bar was closed for the night, after all the customers had gone, even after the staff had straightened up the place and gone home themselves, I sat there, alone. I didn’t want to go home right away. I phoned my wife and told her I had something to take care of at work and would be late. I turned out the lights and sat in the dark, drinking whiskey. Too much trouble to get ice out, so I drank it straight.

Everyone just keeps on disappearing. Some things just vanish, like they were cut away. Others fade slowly into the mist. And all that remains is a desert.

When I left the bar, just before dawn, a light rain was falling on the main street in Aoyama. I was exhausted. Soundlessly, the rain soaked the rows of tall buildings, standing there like so many gravestones. I left my car in the bar’s parking lot and walked home. On the way, I sat down on a guardrail and watched a large crow that was cawing from the top of a traffic signal. The four a.m. streets looked shabby and filthy. The shadow of decay and disintegration lurked everywhere, and I was part of it. Like a shadow burned into a wall.