Japanese Portraits: Pictures of Different People (20 page)

- You'll certainly need it there, I said and waited.

But she did not try out her pronunciation on me. Instead, she said: I'm leaving this spring, so I should study harder than I am.

- You seem to be studying hard.

She smiled—she was very pretty indeed when she smiled: Not really. The fact is I want to leave Japan more than I want to go to America.

Since she was this direct, I too could be. Why, I wanted to know.

She looked at me as though gauging my character, as though trying to determine whether she could trust me. Having, apparently, decided, she said: Trouble with my parents.

She wanted to talk, though not about English, so I asked what kind of trouble.

It all came out at once, the way it sometimes does. She had been in love with a young man of whom her parents disapproved. They disapproved of him because he was of Korean ancestry though, like her, born in Japan. She had left home to go and live with him. But, this being Japan, with pressure from her parents, and his, from their schools, their friends—after a month they had parted. She never saw him again and that was now a whole season ago. So she wanted to leave Japan.

- Is America like that? she wanted to know.

- Yes. But there would be places for you both to go there. You could get married.

- Not here ... Is it true that a girl never forgets her first love?

- They say so. It isn't true only of girls, either. I've never forgotten mine.

She looked at me for a second, then said: I'm not a virgin any more. I loved him that much.

- Did that upset your parents?

- Yes, they're old-fashioned. They think a girl ought to be a virgin when she marries.

All of this had occurred within ten minutes of my sitting at her table. This happens occasionally. One is chosen for sudden confidences. There seems to be a compelling combination of difference and safety. But I had never experienced such revelations so swiftly. I, in turn, became suspicious.

- Going to America will solve no problems. He won't be there.

- I know. But it will solve one problem. I won't be here. You speak the language well but I wonder if you really know Japan. People talking about you, criticizing you, making you live the way everyone else does ... the gossip in this country!

- Yes. I realized long ago that if I were Japanese myself I wouldn't stay here. But I'm not and so none of this affects me. Foreigners are so different that the Japanese don't bother to gossip about them.

- I envy you that. If it were that way with me I wouldn't have to leave. But if I stay I'll have to get married to someone I don't even know, have his child, and then live with him till I die. I don't want that.

- You're brave, I said.

- I'm desperate, she said and smiled again, that lovely smile.

I regarded it with more suspicion. What was she after? Was I supposed to do something, make some kind of offer?

Suspicion is always vulgar, even when merited—like jealousy. I realized that and saw that the oddity of our meeting, our conversation, alone had aroused suspicions. I was no better than her parents.

- Is there anything I can do? I asked to open my thoughts, to rid myself of them.

This, however, made
her
suspicious: Like what? What could you do?

- I don't know. I have friends in America. Introduce you, perhaps, so you wouldn't have to be alone.

- No, I think I want to be alone for a while.

Then, with that pertinence which young girls often have: I'm only telling you this because I don't know you, because you're sympathetic, because I won't see you again.

- Did it hurt? I asked: I've always wondered about that. Does it hurt to lose your virginity? One hears all sorts of stories.

She thought, suspicions oddly laid at rest by my question, then: Yes and no. It hurts, but it's a different kind of pain. Maybe it's like having a child. My mother told me that that hurt but afterward she couldn't remember the ... well, the quality of the pain.

- Can you remember the quality of the pain?

- Not really. Anyway, it didn't last long.

- Then the pleasure?

- Yes, the pleasure, but that too was different.

There we sat amid our plastic debris, a young Japanese girl and an older foreign man. I was as frank as she was and before long we were telling each other intimate details. But it was all in the spirit of sharing knowledge, as though we were both already quite old, as if we knew that this single conversation was only for itself.

We sat there an hour or more and came to know, if not each other, at least our ideas of our selves. She approved of mine; I approved of hers. The conversation never became oppressive because it never became self-conscious. Neither was in any way investing in the other. Both were aware that it had no continuation.

As I listened, talked, I also saw how my awareness had been dulled by what I had taught myself to believe about the Japanese. None of my many generalizations about the people, necessary enough, I suppose, if I were to live here, would have allowed for this conversation. And it was the same with her: whatever general ideas she may have formed about the character of foreign men were not being upheld by me.

We were two strangers who, because of this, could reach out with a degree of honesty and trust. That she was Japanese, that I was not—slowly these facts and the ideas they habitually trailed after them faded away. We were simply two people talking.

The ending, however, was Japanese. She could not bring herself to simply smile, stand up, say goodbye—a possible "American" conclusion. Instead, on a paper napkin, she wrote her name, address, and telephone number. I responded with mine.

Then, each still holding on to a part of the other, we parted, conventionally enough, with my wishes for her safe and happy journey.

The napkin is here before me, which is why I know her name was Keiko Matsunaga. Somewhere in this vast city, or in some vast city over there, perhaps my name on a paper napkin also exists.

But I will not call her. And she will not call me. This too was understood. We have had our talk. Our next conversation would have been much less interesting because then "we" would have had a future, and when one has that, the present vanishes.

I see her now, existing as she existed then: securely in the present tense.

The new delivery boy at the
nandemoya
, the no-matter-what store, the local emporium, was tall, nineteen or so, with a round face and cheeks as red as the apples grown in the northern province from which he came. His name was Sato, a name as common as apples themselves.

Surrounded by shelves piled with brushes and pots and towels and bottles of detergent, strainers for bean curd, sukiyaki pans, soap flakes, rubber gloves, and no-matter-what, I asked for the single object I couldn't locate, a pumice stone for rubbing the soles of my feet in the bath.

After a protracted search Sato came back with word that they had none.

- You're supposed to have no matter what, I said sternly.

- I'm very sorry, replied apple-cheeked Sato, redder than ever. Newly acquired Tokyo accent forgotten, his apology was in the broadest of Akita dialects.

I smiled, seeing that my heavy little joke had been misunderstood. It doesn't matter, I said, as cordially as this phrase allows. The boy bowed me out, still flushed, still apologizing.

Late that evening, listening to a Mozart quartet, I heard the screech of bike brakes and then a timid thumping on the front gate. It was Sato, still flushed from pumping up the hill. He extended a hand. In it was a small paper-wrapped package. My pumice stone.

- You had it after all, I said and he, nodding, looked past me into the entryway. Realizing that he was curious as to how a foreigner lived, I invited him in for a cup of tea.

He refused and I insisted, as custom demanded. Then he pulled off his boots and stepped up. He was very large. I had not realized just how large until I saw him in the house. Big feet, big hands. But not hulking, too polite for that and—curious in a modern youth—gentle.

Over tea he asked politely: What's that you're playing?

- That's Mozart.

- Ah, Mozart, a composer. It's beautiful.

- K. 590, I added.

- Oh? He leaned forward, concerned, troubled.

- They number Mozart, I explained: He wrote lots. They keep track of it this way.

- Oh, he said, as though relieved, then smiled and shook his head to indicate that it was all beyond him, something from a different world: It's very pretty anyway.

I asked him the price of the pumice stone.

- Oh, no, that's all right.

- No, it isn't all right.

I looked for a price on the paper and noticed that it did not come from his
nandemoya
, but from somewhere in far Shibuya.

- This isn't from your store.

- Eh, he replied, a common answer. It means yes, or no, or both, or nothing at all.

- After work you bicycled all the way to Shibuya to get this pumice stone.

- But we ought to have had it, he explained, reddening: You said yourself that we're a store that's supposed to have no matter what.

- That was a joke.

He looked up, cheeks red, surprised. Then slowly he understood, smiled: Ah, he said, a joke. You foreigners are famous for your humor.

He used
yumoru
, there being, typically, no word in Japanese for this famous quality. Then he laughed politely to show he had got the point. After we had savored my pleasantry for a while I again attempted to pay for my pumice stone.

- It cost much less than the cup of tea you gave me, he said.

I understood. It was not for me that he had gone and bought it, it was for the reputation of his store. They had been put to shame. He had atoned. And it was true—pumice stones were indeed very cheap.

Mozart came to an end.

- That was nice, he said.

- Do you like music?

- Yes.

- Who's your favorite composer?

- Hawaiian.

- I see.

- Do you have any Hawaiian?

- No, only classical.

He scratched his head, indicating that
kurasiku
was too difficult for him.

- But you were enjoying the Mozart, I said.

- But it's too difficult to understand, he answered.

- You only discovered it was too difficult when you learned it was
kurasiku.
Before that you were enjoying it.

For the first time he looked straight at me. This was a new idea. It was as if I had awakened him. He laughed with pleasure at the thought. Life was less complicated than he had been led to believe. Here he had been sitting, understanding Mozart.

Still, he had his polite doubts: I wonder, he said. He used a feminine form—so
kashira.

And I in turn wondered. Was this Akita custom, was he mistaking Tokyo usage, or... ?

- Is your father dead? I asked with that directness for which foreigners are also famous.

He closed up instantly, as though my question had been a poking finger. Eyes dropped, smile stopped. Foreigners are like magicians. They deduce. They then disclose. The Japanese deduce things as well, of course, but they never let on.

- Yes, he finally answered: When I was five. (Then, as sometimes happens, he told me something he would not easily tell another Japanese.) He killed himself.

More questions, more answers, and his own short history emerged. Only son of a poor widow who scraped to send her son through middle school. Then, distant relative's introduction, trip to Tokyo, new job, bright lights, excitement. Weekly letter home to mother, monthly day off, vague hopes for the future. Alongside this another story. Father drank, father gambled, father ran around, father finally killed himself, leaving widow and infant behind.

As a consequence, young Sato did not drink, knew nothing of horse-racing or women, and devoted himself to his job; and, a further consequence, he obviously missed his mother, whose feminine
so kashira
I had just heard.

Silence. And a heaviness, as though we had both eaten too much. He was no doubt already regretting his confidences. Why, we had met only that afternoon. The conversation languished as it always does before a departure. Soon he was thanking me for the excellent tea, and giving me a formal bow.

And then, unexpectedly, a warm, country smile appeared. Perhaps Sato felt that besides being indiscreet he had also begun to make a friend. I felt this too and showed it by not mentioning the pumice stone again.

Nevertheless, I saw nothing of him for a time except in passing. Occasionally when I was leaving he would race by on his bike, basket piled with soap flakes, towels, steel wool, detergents.
Konnichiwa
, he would call, speeding on.