Twenty-Six (42 page)

“This is top-quality sake,” Yuka says, sliding the traditional 1.8 litre bottle from the sack. She unscrews the cap from the bottle and fills two small glasses. “This should be much warmer, but …” She sets the two glasses on a dressing table. Meta reaches for a glass, but Yuka puts a hand on her wrist.

“When you are in your yukata and ready to go onsen, then you may take sake.”

“All right, all right,” Meta says, conceding to the desire for sake. She slips out of her clothes, and keeping her eyes down, pulls the yukata quickly around her.

The two women stand with their small glasses of sake. “Good sake is drink very slowly,” Yuka says. She brings her glass to her lips. A pink tip of tongue moves out to meet the lip of the glass as it nears her mouth. She takes a microscopic taste. Meta watches her carefully and repeats her exact motions. The sake is delicious. It is absolutely tasty. For the first time she understands why someone might want to drink sake. The flavour is so delicate, crystalline. At the taste, the blood begins to move quickly inside her. She feels her face flush.

At the far end of the onsen room is a one-and-a-half-storey wall of glass. On the other side of the glass: a pond, some large rocks, greenery, snow. The onsen room itself is huge, luxurious, what the Japanese would describe with the English word
gorgeous
. The floor and walls are laid with thick, earthy, contoured tiles. The stools and basins are made from a lightweight, delicately grained wood. A few small groups of older women sit at the low shower heads, basins lathered full of soapy water. They intermittently lean their heads toward one another and laugh, sit back on their stools diligently soaping, scrubbing, and rinsing their bodies.

The large, steaming basin of the onsen bath itself is dotted here and there with the greying heads of women joyously clucking to one another. Meta and Yuka find two adjoining shower heads, sit down, and begin silently lathering.

Meta loves the ritual of a Japanese bathhouse. She sits down to her task of washing in order to give it her full attention. She takes her hand towel, lathers it up till it’s dropping thick gobs of soap, and scrubs her face, her neck, her arms as though she wants the skin to come off. Then she fills her basin with clear water from the spout and rinses off the lather. She soaps her hand towel and scrubs herself again.

When she is finished washing, she sits fidgeting with her basin, trying to seem purposeful, waiting for a signal from Yuka to move toward the tub. Yuka stretches, then stands up, and Meta follows her to where the tiled floor gives way to the pool of volcanically warmed water.

The greenish water is unbelievably hot. There is an invigorating mineral snap to its odour, and she can feel it soaking through her to the bone. The tight muscles in her hands are first to begin to loosen, then her forearms and up to the shoulders. When she
gets too warm, she rests at the side. Yuka does not come out of the water once, and Meta begins to wonder how she does it.

“I’m Japanese,” Yuka says when Meta comments. Yuka believes this explains everything.

The water, the tiles, the steam, the heat, these give their voices a shivery, other-worldly quality. With her hair slicked back and her skin aglow from the heat and the scrubbing, the bones of Yuka’s face stand forward, giving her a tranquil, noble aspect. Outside, the big flakes of snow continue to fall in the dark. The garden on the other side of the windows is dark now, but a faint glow from some light source nearby illumines enough so that the flakes of snow and what they fall on remain visible.

When they arrive back in their room, Meta sits on a cushion on the tatami. Her body is electrified. She has scrubbed every square inch of her skin almost raw, and now she feels all of herself, feels the good thick cotton of the yukata rubbing against her. Yuka goes directly to the sink, where she had placed a small decanter of sake in warm water. She pours two small glasses full and hands one to Meta. Meta brings the sake before her nose and smells it. Then she sniffs the warm skin at the back of her wrist. Everything in this country is so achingly well-suited to every other thing, Meta thinks. How can the manufacturers of this sake, somewhere, God-knows-where, in the Kansai maybe, know that the smell of their product is exquisite alongside the exact combination of minerals present naturally in this particular onsen in the mountains of Hakone?

Yuka puts the decanter on the nearby tatami and sits on a cushion next to Meta.

A sad, subdued expression comes over her face, and Meta wonders if she is thinking about the boyfriend in Kyoto.

“Today is special day,” Yuka says.

Meta nods in general agreement, then realizes that Yuka means something more specific.

“Today I am forty years old,” Yuka says.

“This is your birthday! Yuka! I’m angry with you! You didn’t tell me that! I don’t have a present for you!”

“Don’t need present,” Yuka says. “Trip is present.”

“Well,” says Meta. “Let’s have a toast.” She raises her cup. “To forty years,” she says.

“Kampai,” says Yuka, and brings her cup forward. They drink. They sit in silence for a time, their bodies and minds quieted by their soak.

“You know what they say about turning forty. The best is yet to come.”

Yuka begins slowly shaking her head. “No good,” she says. “No good.” She averts her eyes as they fill with tears, then reaches for the decanter and tops up the two glasses. Meta puts out a hand to take the decanter from her. Her fingertips rest on the warm back of Yuka’s hand. Yuka relinquishes the decanter, and Meta puts it far on the opposite side of her, out of Yuka’s reach.

They settle back onto their cushions. One of Yuka’s legs comes free of the yukata and is suddenly bare almost to the hip. Her hair is drying in layers against the side of her cheek. She puts her drink on the mat, picks it up, puts it down again. Her face appears to droop with fatigue.

“When I am married, I am nineteen,” Yuka says. “Mr. Tama is twenty-five. I am university student and he is young salaryman
with his company. This is not arranged marriage. I love him. He is so handsome man! He is so kind man! This is sixties. University student protest American Army bases. Police arrest a lot of people. Everyone say new Japan is coming. I tell Mr. Tama I want to make new Japan. I’m not typical Japanese housewife.” She stops and finishes her sake. She looks out the window at the falling snow. “Now is over my happy life,” she says.

Meta leaves a long silence, waiting until she is sure she’s not cutting Yuka off. “Have you heard from … Kyoto?”

Yuka shakes her head.

“What will you do? When he comes back?”

Yuka leaves the cushion she’s been sitting on and crawls on all fours, deep into the shadows of the room. From her futon she says, “I love him,” and begins crying quietly.

Yuka is obviously drunk and tired and overwhelmed with emotions. Meta is not exactly sure whom she’s saying she loves, the boyfriend or the late husband.

Meta sits in silence a while, noticing the stillness that seems to penetrate the room so completely. The smell of fresh tatami mats calms her further. Before long, Yuka is asleep. Meta can hear her deep breaths rising and falling evenly in the darkness. Meta fumbles around on the floor for the sake decanter and pours herself one last small cupful. Halfway across the world, Ziv is up and starting a new day. He would already have received her last letter. He may have already replied to it. She imagines him a moment, sitting in his bedroom with a pen in his hand, crouching over a stack of writing paper. In a moment this image of Ziv shimmers halfway between imagination and dream as she drifts off to sleep.

When Meta awakes, it is not yet morning. She pulls the quilt from her head. Except for the dim light given off by the snow outside, the room is dark. A low sound hovers at the corner of her attention. At first she thinks it is water moving slowly through plumbing in the walls, or maybe a draft seeping in at the window. Then she recognizes it as a quiet sob. Yuka is crying, her face buried in bedclothes, muffling the sound.

“Yuka!” Meta whispers. She doesn’t know if her friend is asleep or awake. If asleep, she does not want to wake her.

There is no answer.

“Yuka,” she says again. She sits up in bed. In the dim room, she cannot make out where one massive futon ends and the other begins. Thick quilted blankets are billowed and pushed up, casting shadows on themselves. She looks for a shape she can recognize. “Yuka,” she says. She crawls out from under her quilt, the half-open yukata letting in the cold. There is a slight movement ahead in the sheets, but it could be the shadow of a tree from outside. She reaches what she thinks might be the head of the other futon and pulls back the quilt there. A splash of black hair gleams out from the sheets. “Yuka,” she whispers. No reply. She puts her face right down into the hair. The sobs are much more audible at this distance, but she still cannot tell whether Yuka is crying or dreaming of crying. Her hair smells like the onsen. Meta’s nose tingles at the familiarity and association of the scent. She feels the cold creeping into her and pulls back a corner of the quilt to slip beneath it. A knee touches bare skin – the small of a back? a buttock? – she wiggles in behind Yuka and sidles up to her. Yuka is curled away in a fetal position. Her bare buttocks nestled in Meta’s lap. Meta slips back the side of her Yukata and puts the skin of her belly on the small of Yuka’s back.

Yuka’s sobs have quieted, but not ceased. Meta reaches a hand over Yuka’s slim waist, letting her fingers come to rest on Yuka’s small, taut navel.

Meta closes her eyes. But she will be content to sleep now, to go back to sleep holding and comforting her friend. Encircled by Meta’s larger body, draped over by a consoling arm, Yuka ceases crying. Meta opens her eyes and looks over the back of Yuka’s head to the window. It is still dark. She cannot tell whether it is snowing. She closes her eyes again.

Meta arrives back in Tokyo relaxed, yet somehow uneasy. The atmosphere at the Hakone rest house, the food, the sake, the onsen, these have brought her to the deepest sense of contentment and belonging she has felt in all her time in Japan. The noise of Tokyo is what she notices first. The sound of cars on the streets, the hum of trains whizzing past overhead. But the peace of Hakone has taken up residence inside of her, and the commotion of the city seems distant and incapable of affecting her. She feels sure of herself now in her relationship to Yuka. She crawled into bed with her for no other reason than to comfort a friend. But Yuka is a volatile and sometimes confused person. How is she interpreting what took place?

In the hallway outside their apartment doors, Yuka and Meta hug briefly before keying their own locks. Meta is careful not to draw Yuka too close in the hug and to turn her head far to the side to receive Yuka’s kiss on her cheek.

So many ideas and emotions are coursing through her when
she gets inside her apartment that she takes out a notebook, sits at the kitchen table and begins writing.

Meta pauses to choose her next words.

Meta is interrupted in her writing by a knocking at the door. She turns the notebook face down on the table, crosses the kitchen floor, and opens the door. Yuka is standing in the hallway with something in her hand.

“This is in my mail slot,” she holds up a postcard with a reproduction wood-block print on one side. On the other side is a very short note written with thick strokes in black pencil. “Please don’t be angry when you find out what I have done. I am doing it because I love you.” And then his name.

Meta’s stomach drops. Her hands holding the card begin to tremble.

Yuka looks at her in bewilderment. Meta can see that, although Yuka understands the words, she has not decoded the empty finality beneath them.

“This is postmarked Tokyo,” Meta says.

“He is in Kyoto,” Yuka says.

Yuka dials his number from Meta’s place and leaves a message on the answering machine. When she hangs up the phone, she begins to look worried. “What is card’s mean?” she says.

Meta hesitates. “I can’t say for sure. It’s not clear. Do you have a key to his apartment?”

“Yes,” Yuka says.

“I think we’d better go there.” She sets the powder-blue envelope from Ziv on the centre of the table and locks the door on the way out.

The rain that had been falling when they left Tokyo for Hakone has cleared up. The streets still glisten with humidity. To Meta’s surprise, the boyfriend’s apartment is walking distance from where she and Yuka live. They make their way down the exhaust-clogged corridor of Gaen-Higashi dori. The sun has moved far into the western sky and steam rises from the cracks around sewer caps. The door of a Korean restaurant is open, and the smell of kimchee and barbecuing meat bursts hot onto the cold street. They turn right onto Yasukuni dori, then hook right again, up one of the side streets in the direction of Fuji Television. Yuka leads the way to a seven- or eight-storey apartment building. She peeks into one of the mailboxes inside the door, slides the mailbox open, and brings out a handful of envelopes and pizza flyers. She tucks them under her arm and fishes through her purse for the keys. They climb the stairs in unison, Meta two steps back from Yuka. The building is relatively new, but something of
the dull gun-metal paint that had been used on the stairwell makes it seem old and dingy. They stop outside apartment 3B. Bare bulbs in the hallway give just enough light to make walking into the wall unlikely. There is brighter light coming from the crack under the apartment door. A blunt metallic smell hangs in the air.