HANALEI BAY
Sachi lost her nineteen-year-old son to a big shark that attacked him when he was surfing in Hanalei Bay. Properly speaking, it was not the shark that killed him. Alone far from shore when the animal ripped his right leg off, he panicked and drowned. Drowning, therefore, was the official cause of death. The shark nearly tore his surfboard in half as well. Sharks are not fond of human flesh. Most often their first bite disappoints them and they swim away. Which is why there are many cases in which the person loses a leg or an arm but survives as long as he doesn’t panic. Sachi’s son, though, suffered a kind of cardiac arrest, swallowed massive amounts of ocean water, and drowned.
When notice came from the Japanese consulate in Honolulu, Sachi sank to the floor in shock. Her head emptied out, and she found it impossible to think. All she could do was sit there staring at a spot on the wall. How long this went on, she had no idea. But eventually she regained her senses enough to look up the number of an airline and make a reservation for a flight to Hawaii. The consulate staff person had urged her to come as soon as possible in order to identify the victim. There was still some chance it might not be her son.
Because of the holiday season, all seats were booked on that day’s flight and the next day’s as well. Every airline she called told her the same thing, but when she explained her situation, the United reservationist said, “Just get to the airport as soon as you can. We’ll find you a seat.” She packed a few things in a small bag and went out to Narita Airport, where the woman in charge handed her a business-class ticket. “This is all we have today, but we’ll only charge you economy fare,” she said. “This must be terrible for you. Try to bear up.” Sachi thanked her for being so helpful.
When she arrived at Honolulu Airport, Sachi realized she had been so upset that she had forgotten to inform the Japanese consulate of her arrival time. A member of the consulate staff was supposed to be accompanying her to Kauai. She decided to continue on to Kauai alone rather than deal with the complications of making belated arrangements. She assumed that things would work out once she got there. It was still before noon when her second flight arrived at Lihue Airport in Kauai. She rented a car at the Avis counter and went straight to the police station nearby. There, she told them she had just come from Tokyo after having received word that her son was killed by a shark in Hanalei Bay. A graying police officer with glasses took her to the morgue, which was like a cold-storage warehouse, and showed her the body of her son with one leg torn off. Everything from just above the right knee was gone, and a ghastly white bone protruded from the stump. This was her son—there could no longer be any doubt. His face carried no hint of an expression; he looked as he always did when sound asleep. She could hardly believe he was dead. Someone must have arranged his features like this. He looked as though, if you gave his shoulder a hard shake, he would wake up complaining the way he always did in the morning.
In another room, Sachi signed a document certifying that the body was that of her son. The policeman asked her what she planned to do with it. “I don’t know,” she said. “What do people normally do?” They most often cremate it and take the ashes home, he told her. She could also transport the body to Japan, but this required some difficult arrangements and would be far more expensive. Another possibility would be to bury her son on Kauai.
“Please cremate him,” she said. “I’ll take the ashes with me to Tokyo.” Her son was dead, after all. There was no hope of bringing him back to life. What difference did it make whether he was ashes or bones or a corpse? She signed the document authorizing cremation and paid the necessary fee.
“I only have American Express,” she said.
“That will be fine,” the officer said.
Here I am, paying the fee to have my son cremated with an American Express card, Sachi thought. It felt unreal to her, as unreal as her son’s having been killed by a shark. The cremation would take place the next morning, the policeman told her.
“Your English is very good,” the officer said as he put the documents in order. He was a Japanese American by the name of Sakata.
“I lived in the States for a while when I was young,” Sachi said.
“No wonder,” the officer said. Then he gave Sachi her son’s belongings: clothes, passport, return ticket, wallet, Walkman, magazines, sunglasses, shaving kit. They all fit into a small Boston bag. Sachi had to sign a receipt listing these meager possessions.
“Do you have any other children?” the officer asked.
“No, he was my only child,” Sachi replied.
“Your husband couldn’t make the trip?”
“My husband died a long time ago.”
The policeman released a deep sigh. “I’m sorry to hear that. Please let us know if there is anything we can do for you.”
“I’d appreciate it if you could tell me how to get to the place where my son died. And where he was staying. I suppose there’ll be a hotel bill to pay. And I need to get in touch with the Japanese consulate in Honolulu. Could I use your phone?”
He brought her a map and used a felt-tip marker to indicate where her son had been surfing and the location of the hotel where he had been staying. She slept that night in a little hotel in Lihue that the policeman recommended.
As Sachi was leaving the police station, the middle-aged Officer Sakata said to her, “I have a personal favor to ask of you. Nature takes a human life every now and then here on Kauai. You see how beautiful it is on this island, but sometimes, too, it can be wild and deadly. We live here with that potential. I’m very sorry about your son. I really feel for you. But I hope you won’t let this make you hate our island. This may sound self-serving to you after everything you’ve been through, but I really mean it. From the heart.”
Sachi nodded to him.
“You know, ma’am, my brother died in the war in 1944. In Belgium, near the German border. He was a member of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team made up of all Japanese American volunteers. They were there to rescue a Texas battalion surrounded by the Nazis when they took a direct hit and he was killed. There was nothing left but his dog tags and a few chunks of flesh scattered in the snow. My mother loved him so much, they tell me she was like a different person after that. I was just a little kid, so I only knew my mother after the change. It’s painful to think about.”
Officer Sakata shook his head and went on:
“Whatever the ‘noble causes’ involved, people die in war from the anger and hatred on both sides. But Nature doesn’t have ‘sides.’ I know this is a painful experience for you, but try to think of it like this: your son returned to the cycle of Nature; it had nothing to do with any ‘causes’ or anger or hatred.”
Sachi had the cremation performed the next day and took the ashes with her in a small aluminum urn when she drove to Hanalei Bay on the north shore of the island. The trip from the Lihue police station took just over an hour. Virtually all the trees on the island had been deformed by a giant storm that struck a few years earlier. Sachi noticed the remains of several wooden houses with their roofs blown off. Even some of the mountains showed signs of having been reshaped by the storm. Nature could be harsh in this environment.
She continued on through the sleepy little town of Hanalei to the surfing area where her son had been attacked by the shark. Parking in a nearby lot, she went to sit on the beach and watched a few surfers—maybe five in all—riding the waves. They would float far offshore, hanging on to their surfboards, until a powerful wave came through. Then they would catch the wave, push off, and mount their boards, riding almost to the shore. As the force of the waves gave out, they would lose their balance and fall in. Then they would retrieve their boards and slip under the incoming waves as they paddled back out to the open sea, where the whole thing would start over again. Sachi could hardly understand them. Weren’t they afraid of sharks? Or had they not heard that her son had been killed by a shark in this very place a few days earlier?
Sachi went on sitting there, vacantly watching this scene for a good hour. Her mind could not fasten onto any single thing. The weighty past had simply vanished, and the future lay somewhere in the distant gloom. Neither tense had any connection with her now. She sat in the continually shifting present, her eyes mechanically tracing the monotonously repeating scene of waves and surfers. At one point the thought dawned on her: What I need now most of all is time.
Then Sachi went to the hotel where her son had been staying, a shabby little place with an unkempt garden. Two shirtless, long-haired white men sat there in canvas deck chairs, drinking beer. Several empty green Rolling Rock bottles lay among the weeds at their feet. One of the men was blond, the other had black hair. Otherwise, they had the same kind of faces and builds and wore the same kind of florid tattoos on both arms. There was a hint of marijuana in the air, mixed with a whiff of dog shit. As she approached, the two men eyed her suspiciously.
“My son was staying here,” she said. “He was killed by a shark three days ago.”
The men looked at each other. “You mean Takashi?”
“Yes,” Sachi said. “Takashi.”
“He was a cool dude,” the blond man said. “It’s too bad.”
The black-haired man explained in flaccid tones, “That morning, there was, uh, lots of turtles in the bay. The sharks come in lookin’ for the turtles. But, y’know, those guys usually leave the surfers alone. We get along with ’em fine. But, I don’t know, I guess there’s all kinds of sharks…”
Sachi said she had come to pay Takashi’s hotel bill. She assumed there was an outstanding balance on his room.
The blond man frowned and waved his bottle in the air. “No, lady, you don’t get it. Surfers are the only ones who stay in this hotel, and they ain’t got no money. You gotta pay in advance to stay here. We don’t have no ‘outstanding balances.’”
Then the black-haired man said, “Say, lady, you want to take Takashi’s surfboard with you? Damn shark ripped it in two, kinda shredded it. It’s an old Dick Brewer. The cops didn’t take it. I think it’s, uh, somewhere over there…”
Sachi shook her head. She did not want to see the board.
“It’s really too bad,” the blond man said again as if that was the only expression he could think of.
“He was a cool dude,” the black-haired fellow said. “Really OK. Damn good surfer, too. Come to think of it, he was with us the night before, drinkin’ tequila. Yeah.”
Sachi ended up staying in Hanalei for a week. She rented the most decent-looking cottage she could find and cooked her own simple meals. One way or another, she had to get her old self back again before returning to Japan. She bought a vinyl chair, sunglasses, a hat and sunscreen, and sat on the beach every day, watching the surfers. It rained a few times each day—violently, as if someone were tipping a huge bowl of water out of the sky. Autumn weather on the north shore of Kauai was unstable. When a downpour started, she would sit in her car, watching the rain. And when the rain let up, she would go out to sit on the beach again, watching the sea.
Sachi started visiting Hanalei at this season every year. She would arrive a few days before the anniversary of her son’s death and stay three weeks, watching the surfers from a vinyl chair on the beach. That was all she would do each day, every day. It went on like this for ten years. She would stay in the same cottage and eat in the same restaurant, reading a book. As her trips became an established pattern, she found a few people with whom she could speak about personal matters. Many residents of the small town knew her by sight. She became known as the Japanese mom whose son was killed by a shark nearby.
One day, on the way back from Lihue Airport, where she had gone to exchange a balky rental car, Sachi spotted two young Japanese hitchhikers in the town of Kapaa. They were standing outside the Ono Family Restaurant with big sports equipment bags hanging over their shoulders, facing traffic with their thumbs stuck out but looking far from confident. One was tall and lanky, the other short and stocky. Both had shoulder-length hair dyed a rusty red and wore faded T-shirts, baggy shorts, and sandals. Sachi passed them by, but soon changed her mind and turned around.
Opening her window, she asked them in Japanese, “How far are you going?”
“Hey, you can speak Japanese!” the tall one said.
“Well, of course, I am Japanese. How far are you going?”
“A place called Hanalei,” the tall one said.
“Want a ride? I’m on the way back there myself.”
“Great! Just what we were hoping for!” the stocky one said.
They put their bags in the trunk and started to climb into the backseat of Sachi’s Neon.
“Wait just a minute there,” she said. “I’m not going to have you both in back. This is no cab, after all. One of you sit in front. It’s plain good manners.”
They decided the tall one would sit in front, and he timidly got in next to Sachi, wrenching his long legs into the available space. “What kind of car is this?” he asked.
“It’s a Dodge Neon. A Chrysler car,” Sachi answered.
“Hmm, so America has these cramped little cars, too, huh? My sister’s Corolla maybe has more room than this.”
“Well, it’s not as if all Americans ride around in big Cadillacs.”
“Yeah, but this is really little.”
“You can get out right here if you don’t like it,” Sachi said.
“Whoa, I didn’t mean it that way!” he said. “I was just kinda surprised how small this is, that’s all. I thought all American cars were on the big side.”
“So anyway, what’re you going to Hanalei for?” Sachi asked as she drove along.
“Well, surfing, for one thing.”
“Where’re your boards?”
“We’ll get ’em there,” the stocky boy said.
“Yeah, it’s a pain to lug ’em all the way from Japan. And we heard you could get used ones cheap there,” the tall one added.
“How about you, lady? Are you here on vacation, too?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Alone?”
“Alone,” Sachi said lightly.
“I don’t suppose you’re one of them legendary surfers?”
“Don’t be crazy!” Sachi said. “Anyway, have you got a place to stay in Hanalei?”
“Nah, we figured it’d work out once we got there,” the tall one said.
“Yeah, we figured we can always sleep on the beach if we have to,” the stocky one said. “Besides, we ain’t got much money.”
Sachi shook her head. “It gets cold at night on the north shore this time of year—cold enough for a sweater indoors. Sleep outside and you’ll make yourselves sick.”
“It’s not always summer in Hawaii?” the tall one asked.
“Hawaii’s right up there in the northern hemisphere, you know. It’s got four seasons. The summers are hot, and winters can be cold.”
“So we’d better get a roof over our heads,” the stocky boy said.
“Say, lady, do you think you could help us find a place?” the tall one asked. “Our English is, like, nonexistent.”
“Yeah,” said the stocky boy. “We heard you can use Japanese anywhere in Hawaii, but so far it hasn’t worked at all.”
“Of course not!” Sachi said, exasperated. “The only place you can get by with Japanese is Oahu, and just one part of Waikiki at that. They get all these Japanese tourists wanting Louis Vuitton bags and Chanel No. 5, so they hire clerks who can speak Japanese. The same with Hyatt and Sheraton. But outside the hotels, English is the only thing that works. I mean, it’s America, after all. You came all the way to Kauai without knowing that?”
“I had no idea. My mom said everybody in Hawaii speaks Japanese.”
Sachi groaned.
“Anyhow, we can stay at the cheapest hotel in town,” the stocky boy said. “Like I said, we ain’t got any money.”
“Newcomers do not want to stay at the cheapest hotel in Hanalei,” Sachi cautioned them. “It can be dangerous.”
“How’s that?” asked the tall boy.
“Drugs, mainly,” Sachi answered. “Some of those surfers are bad guys. Marijuana might be OK, but watch out for ice.”
“‘Ice’? What’s that?”
“Never heard of it,” said the tall boy.
“You two don’t know anything, do you? You’d make perfect pigeons for those guys. Ice is a hard drug, and it’s everywhere in Hawaii. I don’t know exactly, but it’s some kind of crystallized upper. It’s cheap, and easy to use, and it makes you feel good, but once you get hooked on it you might as well be dead.”
“Scary,” said the tall one.
“You mean it’s OK to do marijuana?” asked the stocky one.
“I don’t know if it’s OK, but at least it won’t kill you. Not like tobacco. It might mess your brain up a little, but you guys wouldn’t know the difference.”
“Hey, that’s harsh!” said the stocky boy.
The tall one asked Sachi, “Are you one of those boomer types?”
“You mean…”
“Yeah, a member of the baby boom generation.”
“I’m not a ‘member’ of any generation. I’m just me. Don’t start lumping me in with any groups, please.”
“That’s it! You are a boomer!” said the stocky boy. “You get so serious about everything right away. Just like my mom.”
“And don’t lump me together with your precious ‘mom,’ either,” Sachi said. “Anyhow, for your own good, you’d better stay in a decent place in Hanalei. Things happen…even murder sometimes.”
“Not exactly the peaceful paradise it’s supposed to be,” the stocky boy said.
“No,” agreed Sachi. “The age of Elvis is long gone.”
“I’m not sure what that’s all about,” said the tall boy, “but I know Elvis Costello is an old guy already.”
Sachi drove without talking for a while after that.
Sachi spoke to the manager of her cottage, who found the boys a room. Her introduction got them a reduced weekly rate, but still it was more than they had budgeted for.
“No way,” said the tall one. “We haven’t got that much money.”
“Yeah, next to nothin’,” said the stocky one.
“You must have something for emergencies,” Sachi insisted.
The tall boy scratched his earlobe and said, “Well, I do have a Diners Club family card, but my dad said absolutely not to use it except for a real, honest-to-goodness emergency. He’s afraid once I start I won’t stop. If I use it for anything but an emergency, I’ll catch hell when I get back to Japan.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Sachi said. “This is an emergency. If you want to stay alive, get that card out right now. The last thing you want is for the police to throw you in jail and have some big Hawaiian make you his girlfriend for the night. Of course, if you like that kind of thing that’s another story, but it hurts.”
The tall boy dug the card out of his wallet and handed it to the manager. Sachi asked for the name of a store where they could buy cheap used surfboards. The manager told her, adding, “And when you leave, they’ll buy them back from you.” The boys left their packs in the room and hurried off to the store.
Sachi was sitting on the beach, looking at the ocean as usual the next morning, when the two young Japanese boys showed up and started surfing. Their surfing skills were solid, in contrast to their helplessness on land. They would spot a strong wave, mount it nimbly, and guide their boards toward shore with grace and sure control. They kept this up for hours without a break. They looked truly alive when they were riding the waves: their eyes shone, they were full of confidence. There was no sign of yesterday’s timidity. Back home, they probably spent their days on the water, never studying—just like her dead son.
Sachi had begun playing the piano in high school—a late start for a pianist. She had never touched the instrument before. She started fooling around with the one in the music room after classes, and before long she had taught herself to play well. It turned out she had absolute pitch, and an ear that was far above ordinary. She could hear a melody once and turn it into patterns on the keyboard. She could find the right chords for the melody. Without being taught by anyone, she learned how to move her fingers smoothly. She obviously had a natural, inborn gift for the piano.
The young music teacher heard her playing one day, liked what he heard, and helped her correct some basic fingering errors. “You can play it that way, but you can speed it up if you do it like this,” he said, and demonstrated for her. She got it immediately. A great jazz fan, this teacher instructed her in the mysteries of jazz theory after school: chord formation and progression, use of the pedal, the concept of improvisation. She greedily absorbed everything. He lent her records: Red Garland, Bill Evans, Wynton Kelly. She would listen to them over and over until she could copy them perfectly. Once she got the hang of it, such imitation became easy for her. She could reproduce the music’s sound and flow directly through her fingers without transcribing anything. “You’ve got real talent,” the teacher said to her. “If you work hard, you can be a pro.”
But Sachi didn’t believe him. All she could do was produce accurate imitations, not music of her own. When urged to adlib, she didn’t know what to play. She would start out improvising and end up copying someone else’s original solo. Reading music was another of her stumbling blocks. With the detailed notation of a score in front of her, she found it hard to breathe. It was far easier for her to transfer what she heard directly to the keyboard. No, she thought: there was no way she could become a pro.
She decided instead to study cooking after high school. Not that she had a special interest in the subject, but her father owned a restaurant, and since she had nothing else she particularly wanted to do, she thought she would carry the business on after him. She went to Chicago to attend a professional cooking school. Chicago was not a city known for its sophisticated cuisine, but the family had relatives there who agreed to sponsor her.
A classmate at the cooking school introduced her to a small piano bar downtown, and soon she was playing there. At first she thought of it as part-time work to earn some spending money. Barely managing to scrape by on what little they sent her from home, she was glad for the extra cash. The owner of the bar loved the way she could play any tune at all. Once she heard a song, she would never forget it, and even with a song she had never heard before, if someone hummed it for her, she could play it on the spot. She was no beauty, but she had attractive features, and her presence started bringing more and more people to the bar. The tips they left her also began to mount up. She eventually stopped going to school. Sitting in front of the piano was so much easier—and so much more fun—than dressing a bloody chunk of pork, grating a rock-hard cheese, or washing the scum from a heavy frying pan.
And so, when her son became a virtual high school dropout to spend all his time surfing, Sachi resigned herself to it. I did the same kind of thing when I was young. I can’t blame him. It’s probably in the blood.
She played in the bar for a year and a half. Her English improved, she put away a fair amount of money, and she got herself a boyfriend—a handsome African American aspiring actor. (Sachi would later spot him in a supporting role in Die Hard 2.) One day, however, an immigration officer with a badge on his chest showed up at the bar. She had apparently made too big a splash. The officer asked for her passport and arrested her on the spot for working illegally. A few days later she found herself on a jumbo jet bound for Narita—with a ticket she had to pay for from her savings. So ended Sachi’s life in America.
Back in Tokyo, Sachi thought about the possibilities open to her for the rest of her life, but playing the piano was the only way she could think of to make a go of it. Her opportunities were limited by her handicap with written music, but there were places where her talent for playing by ear was appreciated—hotel lounges, nightclubs, and piano bars. She could play in any style demanded by the atmosphere of the place, the types of customer, or the requests that came in. She might be a genuine “musical chameleon,” but she never had trouble making a living.
She married at the age of twenty-four, and two years later gave birth to a son. The man was a jazz guitarist one year younger than Sachi. His income was virtually nonexistent. He was addicted to drugs, and he fooled around with women. He stayed out much of the time, and when he did come home, he was often violent. Everyone opposed the marriage, and afterward everyone urged Sachi to divorce him. Unpolished though he was, Sachi’s husband possessed an original talent, and in the jazz world he was gaining attention as an upcoming star. This was probably what attracted Sachi to him in the first place. But the marriage lasted only five years. He suffered a heart seizure one night in another woman’s room, and died stark naked as they were rushing him to the hospital. It was probably a drug overdose.
Soon after her husband died, Sachi opened her own small piano bar in the fashionable Roppongi neighborhood. She had some savings, and she collected on an insurance policy she had secretly taken out on her husband’s life. She also managed to get a bank loan. It helped that a regular customer at the bar where Sachi had been playing was the head of a branch. She installed a used grand piano in the place, and built a counter that followed the shape of the instrument. To run the business, she paid a high salary to a capable bartender-manager she had decided to hire away from another bar. She played every night, taking requests from customers and accompanying them when they sang. A fishbowl sat on the piano for tips. Musicians appearing at jazz clubs in the neighborhood would stop by now and then to play a quick tune or two. The bar soon had its regular customers, and business was better than Sachi had hoped for. She was able to repay her loan on schedule. Quite fed up with married life as she had known it, she did not remarry, but she had men friends every now and then. Most of them were married, which made it all the easier for her. As time went by, her son grew up, became a surfer, and announced that he was going to go to Hanalei in Kauai. She didn’t like the idea, but she tired of arguing with him and reluctantly paid his fare. Long verbal battles were not her specialty. And so, while he was waiting for a good wave to come in, her son was attacked by a shark that entered the bay in pursuit of turtles, and ended his short life of nineteen years.
Sachi worked harder than ever once her son was dead. She played and played and played that first year, almost without letup. And when autumn was coming to an end, she took a three-week break, bought a business-class ticket on United Airlines, and went to Kauai. Another pianist took her place while she was gone.
Sachi sometimes played in Hanalei, too. One restaurant had a baby grand that was played on weekends by a string bean of a pianist in his midfifties. He would perform mostly harmless little tunes such as “Bali Hai” and “Blue Hawaii.” He was nothing special as a pianist, but his warm personality came through in his playing. Sachi got friendly with him and sat in for him now and then. She did it for fun, so of course the restaurant didn’t pay her anything, but the owner would treat her to wine and a plate of pasta. It just felt good to get her hands on the keys: it opened her up. This was not a question of talent or whether the activity was of any use. Sachi imagined that her son must have felt the same way when he was riding the waves.
In all honesty, however, Sachi had never really liked her son. Of course she loved him—he was the most important person in the world to her—but as an individual human being, she had had trouble liking him, which was a realization that it took her a very long time to reach. She probably would have had nothing to do with him had they not shared the same blood. He was self-centered, could never concentrate on anything, could never bring anything to fruition. She could never talk to him seriously about anything; he would immediately make up some phony excuse to avoid such talk. He hardly ever studied, which meant his grades were miserable. The only thing he ever lent some effort to was surfing, and there was no telling how long he would have kept that up. A sweet-faced boy, he never had a shortage of girlfriends, but after he had gotten what fun he could out of a girl, he would cast her off like an old toy. Maybe I’m the one who spoiled him, Sachi thought. Maybe I gave him too much spending money. Maybe I should have been stricter with him. But she had no concrete idea what she could have done so as to be stricter with him. Work had kept her too busy, and she knew nothing about boys—their psyches or their bodies.
Sachi was playing at the restaurant one evening when the two young surfers came in for a meal. It was the sixth day since they had arrived in Hanalei. They were thoroughly tanned, and they seemed to have a sturdier look about them now as well.
“Hey, you play the piano!” the stocky one exclaimed.
“And you’re good, too—a real pro,” chimed in the tall one.
“I do it for fun,” she said.
“Know any songs by the B’z?”
“No J-pop for me, thanks!” Sachi said. “But wait a minute, I thought you guys were broke. Can you afford to eat in a place like this?”
“Sure, I got my Diners Card!” the tall one announced.
“Yes, for emergencies…”
“Oh, I’m not worried. My old man was right, though. Use it once and it becomes a habit.”
“True, so now you can take it easy,” Sachi said.
“We were thinking we ought to buy you dinner,” the stocky boy said. “To thank you. You helped us a lot. And we’re goin’ home the day after tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” said the tall one. “How about right now? We can order wine, too. Our treat!”
“I’ve already had my dinner,” Sachi said, lifting her glass of red wine. “And this was on the house. I’ll accept your thanks, though. I appreciate the sentiment.”
Just then a large white man approached their table and stood near Sachi with a glass of whiskey in his hand. He was around forty and wore his hair short. His arms were like slender telephone poles, and one bore a large dragon tattoo above the letters “USMC.” Judging from its fading colors, the tattoo had been applied some years before.
“Hey, little lady, I like your piano playing,” he said.
Sachi glanced up at him and said, “Thanks.”
“You Japanese?”
“Sure am.”
“I was in Japan once. A long time ago. Stationed two years in Iwakuni. A long time ago.”
“Well, what do you know? I was in Chicago once for two years. A long time ago. That makes us even.”
The man thought about this for a moment, seemed to decide that she was joking, and smiled.
“Play something for me. Something upbeat. You know Bobby Darin’s ‘Beyond the Sea’? I wanna sing it.”
“I don’t work here, you know,” she said. “And right now I’m having a conversation with these two boys. See that skinny gentleman with the thinning hair sitting at the piano? He’s the pianist here. Maybe you ought to give your request to him. And don’t forget to leave him a tip.”
The man shook his head. “That fruitcake can’t play anything but wishy-washy queer stuff. I wanna hear you play—something snappy. There’s ten bucks in it for you.”
“I wouldn’t do it for five hundred.”
“So that’s the way it is, huh?” the man said.
“Yes, that’s the way it is,” Sachi said.
“Tell me something, then, will you? Why aren’t you Japanese willing to fight to protect your own country? Why do we have to drag our asses to Iwakuni to keep you guys safe?”
“And because of that I’m supposed to shut up and play?”
“You got it,” the man said. He glanced across the table at the two boys. “And lookit you two—a coupla Jap surf bums. Come all the way to Hawaii—for what? In Iraq, we—”
“Let me ask you a question,” Sachi interjected. “Something I’ve been wondering about ever since you came over here.”
“Sure. Ask away.”
Twisting her neck, Sachi looked straight up at the man. “I’ve been wondering this whole time,” she said, “how somebody gets to be like you. Were you born that way, or did something terrible happen to make you the way you are? Which do you think it is?”
The man gave this a moment’s thought and then slammed his whiskey glass down on the table. “Look, lady—”
The owner of the restaurant heard the man’s raised voice and hurried over. He was a small man, but he took the ex-marine’s thick arm and led him away. They were friends apparently, and the ex-marine offered no resistance other than a parting shot or two.
The owner came back shortly afterward and apologized to Sachi. “He’s usually not a bad guy, but liquor changes him. Don’t worry, I’ll set him straight. Meanwhile, let me buy you something. Forget this ever happened.”
“That’s okay,” Sachi said. “I’m used to this kind of thing.”
The stocky boy asked Sachi, “What was that guy saying?”
“Yeah, I couldn’t catch a thing,” the tall boy added, “except ‘Jap.’”
“It’s just as well,” Sachi said. “Never mind. Have you guys had a good time here in Hanalei? Surfing your brains out, I suppose.”
“Faaantastic!” said the stocky boy.
“Just super,” said the tall one. “It changed my life. No kiddin’.”
“That’s wonderful,” Sachi said. “Get all the fun you can out of life while you’re still able. They’ll serve you the bill soon enough.”
“No problem,” said the tall boy. “I’ve got my card.”
“That’s the way,” Sachi said, shaking her head. “Nice and easy.”
Then the stocky boy said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you something, if you don’t mind.”
“About what?”
“I was just wondering if you had ever seen the one-legged Japanese surfer.”
“One-legged Japanese surfer?” Sachi looked straight at him with narrowed eyes. “No, I never have.”
“We saw him twice. He was on the beach, staring at us. He had a red Dick Brewer surfboard, and his leg was gone from here down.” The stocky boy drew a line with his finger a few inches above his knee. “Like it was chopped off. He was gone when we came out of the water. Just disappeared. We wanted to talk to him, so we tried hard to find him, but he wasn’t anywhere. I guess he musta been about our age.”
“Which leg was gone? The right one or the left one?” Sachi asked.
The stocky boy thought for a moment and said, “I’m pretty sure it was the right one. Right?”
“Yeah, definitely. The right one,” the tall boy said.
“Hmm,” Sachi said and moistened her mouth with a sip of wine. She could hear the sharp, hard beating of her heart. “You’re sure he was Japanese? Not Japanese American?”
“No way,” the tall boy said. “You can tell the difference right away. No, this guy was a surfer from Japan. Like us.”
Sachi bit hard into her lower lip, and stared at them for some moments. Then, her voice dry, she said, “Strange, though. This is such a small town, you couldn’t miss seeing somebody like that even if you wanted to: a one-legged Japanese surfer.”
“Yeah,” said the stocky boy. “I know it’s strange. A guy like that’d stick out like a sore thumb. But he was there, I’m sure of it. We both saw him.”
The tall boy looked at Sachi and said, “You’re always sitting there on the beach, right? He was standing there on one leg, a little ways away from where you always sit. And he was looking right at us, kind of like leaning against a tree trunk. He was under that clump of iron trees on the other side of the picnic tables.”
Sachi took a silent swallow of her wine.
The stocky boy went on: “I wonder how he can stand on his surfboard with one leg? It’s tough enough with two.”
Every day after that, from morning to evening, Sachi walked back and forth along the full length of Hanalei’s long beach, but there was never any sign of the one-legged surfer. She asked the local surfers, “Have you seen a one-legged Japanese surfer?” but they all gave her strange looks and shook their heads. A one-legged Japanese surfer? Never seen such a thing. If I had, I’d be sure to remember. He’d stand out. But how can anybody surf with one leg?
The night before she went back to Japan, Sachi finished packing and got into bed. The cries of the geckos mingled with the sound of the surf. Before long, she realized that her pillow was damp: she was crying. Why can’t I see him? she wondered. Why did he appear to those two surfers—who were nothing to him—and not to me? It was so unfair! She brought back the image of her son’s corpse in the morgue. If only it were possible, she would shake his shoulder until he woke up, and she would shout at him—Tell me why! How could you do such a thing?
Sachi buried her face in her damp pillow for a long time, muffling her sobs. Am I simply not qualified to see him? she asked herself, but she did not know the answer to her own question. All she knew for sure was that, whatever else she might do, she had to accept this island. As that gentle-spoken Japanese American police officer had suggested to her, she had to accept the things on this island as they were. As they were: fair or unfair, qualified or unqualified, it didn’t matter. Sachi woke up the next morning as a healthy middle-aged woman. She loaded her suitcase into the backseat of her Dodge and left Hanalei Bay.
She had been back in Japan for some eight months when she bumped into the stocky boy in Tokyo. Taking refuge from the rain, she was drinking a cup of coffee in a Starbucks near the Roppongi subway station. He was sitting at a nearby table. He was nattily dressed, in a well-pressed Ralph Lauren shirt and new chinos, and he was with a petite, pleasant-featured girl.
“What a coincidence!” he exclaimed as he approached her table with a big smile.
“How’ve you been?” she asked. “Look how short your hair is!”
“Well, I’m just about to graduate from college,” he said.
“I don’t believe it! You?”
“Uh-huh. I’ve got at least that much under control,” he said, slipping into the chair across from her.
“Have you quit surfing?”
“I do some on weekends once in a while, but not much longer: it’s hiring season now.”
“How about beanpole?”
“Oh, he’s got it easy. No job-hunting worries for him. His father’s got a big Western pastry shop in Akasaka, says they’ll buy him a BMW if he takes over the business. He’s so lucky!”
Sachi glanced outside. The passing summer shower had turned the streets black. Traffic was at a standstill, and an impatient taxi driver was honking his horn.
“Is she your girlfriend?” Sachi asked.
“Uh-huh…I guess. I’m workin’ on it,” he said, scratching his head.
“She’s cute. Too cute for you. Probably not giving you what you want.”
His eyes went up to the ceiling. “Whoa! I see you still say exactly what you think. You’re right, though. Got any good advice for me? To make things happen, I mean…”
“There are only three ways to get along with a girl: one, shut up and listen to what she has to say; two, tell her you like what she’s wearing; and three, treat her to really good food. Easy, huh? If you do all that and still don’t get the results you want, better give up.”
“Sounds good: simple and practical. Mind if I write it down in my notebook?”
“Of course not. But you mean to say you can’t remember that much?”
“Nah, I’m like a chicken: three steps, and my mind’s a blank. So I write everything down. I heard Einstein used to do that.”
“Oh, sure, Einstein.”
“I don’t mind being forgetful,” he said. “It’s actually forgetting stuff that I don’t like.”
“Do as you please,” Sachi said.
Stocky pulled out his notebook and wrote down what she had said.
“You always give me good advice. Thanks again.”
“I hope it works.”
“I’ll give it my best shot,” he said, and stood up to go back to his own table. After a moment’s thought, he held out his hand. “You, too,” he said. “Give it your best shot.”
Sachi took his hand. “I’m glad the sharks didn’t eat you in Hanalei Bay,” she said.
“You mean, there are sharks there? Seriously?”
“Uh-huh,” she said. “Seriously.”
Sachi sits at the keyboard every night, moving her fingers almost automatically, and thinking of nothing else. Only the sounds of the piano pass through her mind—in one door and out the other. When she is not playing, she thinks about the three weeks she spends in Hanalei at the end of autumn. She thinks about the sound of the incoming waves and the sighing of the iron trees. The clouds carried along by the trade winds, the albatrosses sailing across the sky, their huge wings spread wide. And she thinks about what surely must await her there. That is all there is for her to think about now. Hanalei Bay.
—TRANSLATED BY JAY RUBIN
WHERE I’M LIKELY TO FIND IT
My husband’s father was run over by a streetcar three years ago and died,” the woman said, and paused.
I didn’t say a word, just looked her right in the eyes and nodded twice. During the pause, I glanced at the half-dozen pencils in the pen tray, checking to see how sharp they were. Like a golfer carefully selecting the right club, I deliberated over which one to use, finally picking one that wasn’t too sharp, or too worn, but just right.
“The whole thing’s a little embarrassing,” the woman said.
Keeping my opinion to myself, I laid a memo pad in front of me and tested the pencil by writing down the date and the woman’s name.
“There aren’t many streetcars left in Tokyo,” she went on.
“They’ve switched to buses most everywhere. The few that are left are kind of a memento of the past, I guess. And it was one of those that killed my father-in-law.” She gave a silent sigh. “This was the night of October first, three years ago. It was pouring that night.”
I noted down the basics of her story. Father-in-law, three years ago, streetcar, heavy rain, October 1, night. I like to take great care when I write, so it took a while to note all this down.
“My father-in-law was completely drunk at the time. Otherwise, he obviously wouldn’t have fallen asleep on a rainy night on the streetcar tracks.”
She fell silent again, lips closed, her eyes steadily gazing at me. She was probably wanting me to agree with her.
“He must have been pretty drunk,” I said.
“So drunk he passed out.”
“Did your father-in-law often drink that much?”
“You mean did he often drink so much that he passed out?”
I nodded.
“He did get drunk every once in a while,” she admitted. “But not all the time, and never so drunk that he’d fall asleep on the streetcar tracks.”
How drunk would you have to be to fall asleep on the rails of a streetcar line? I wondered. Was the amount a person drank the main issue? Or did it have more to do with why he was getting drunk in the first place?
“What you’re saying is that he got drunk sometimes, but usually not falling-down drunk?” I asked.
“That’s the way I see it,” she replied.
“May I ask your age, if you don’t mind?”
“You want to know how old I am?”
“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
The woman rubbed the bridge of her nose with her index finger. It was a lovely, perfectly straight nose. My guess was she had recently had plastic surgery. I used to go out with a woman who had the same habit. She’d had a nose job, and whenever she was thinking about something she rubbed the bridge with her index finger. As if she were making sure her brand-new nose was still there. Looking at this woman in front of me now brought on a mild case of déjà vu. Which, in turn, conjured up vague memories of oral sex.
“I’m not trying to hide my age or anything,” the woman said. “I’m thirty-five.”
“And how old was your father-in-law when he died?”
“Sixty-eight.”
“What did he do? His job, I mean.”
“He was a priest.”
“By priest you mean a Buddhist priest?”
“That’s right. A Buddhist priest. Of the Jodo sect. He was head of a temple in the Toshima Ward.”
“That must have been a real shock,” I said.
“That my father-in-law was run over by a streetcar?”
“Yes.”
“Of course it was a shock. Especially for my husband,” the woman said.
I noted some more things down on my memo pad. Priest, Jodo sect, 68.
The woman was sitting at one end of my love seat. I was in my swivel chair behind my desk. Two yards separated us. She had on a sharp-looking sage green suit. Her legs were beautiful, and her stockings matched her black high-heeled shoes. The stilettos looked like some kind of deadly weapon.
“So what you’ve come to ask me,” I said, “concerns your husband’s late father?”
“No. It’s not about him,” she said. She shook her head slightly a couple of times to emphasize the negative. “It’s about my husband.”
“Is he also a priest?”
“No, he works at Merrill Lynch.”
“The investment firm?”
“That’s right,” she replied, clearly a little irritated. What other Merrill Lynch is there? her tone implied. “He’s a stockbroker.”
I checked the tip of my pencil to see how worn it was, then waited for her to continue.
“My husband is an only son, and he was more interested in stock-trading than Buddhism, so he didn’t succeed his father as head priest of the temple.”
Which all makes perfect sense, don’t you think? her eyes said, but since I didn’t have an opinion one way or the other regarding Buddhism or stock-trading, I didn’t respond. Instead, I adopted a neutral expression that indicated that I was absorbing every word.
“After my father-in-law passed away, my mother-in-law moved into an apartment in our condo, in Shinagawa. A different unit in the same building. My husband and I live on the twenty-sixth floor, and she’s on the twenty-fourth. She lives alone. She’d lived in the temple with her husband, but after another priest came to take over she had to move. She’s sixty-three. And my husband, I should add, is forty. He’ll be forty-one next month, if nothing’s happened to him, that is.”
I made a memo of it all. Mother-in-law 24th floor, 63. Husband, 40, Merrill Lynch, 26th floor, Shinagawa. The woman waited patiently for me to finish.
“After my father-in-law died, my mother-in-law started having panic attacks. They seem to be worse when it’s raining, probably because her husband died on a rainy night. A fairly common thing, I imagine.”
I nodded.
“When the symptoms are bad, it’s like a screw’s come loose in her head. She calls us and my husband goes down the two floors to her place to take care of her. He tries to calm her down, to convince her that everything’s going to be all right. If my husband’s not at home, then I go.”
She paused, waiting for my reaction. I kept quiet.
“My mother-in-law’s not a bad person. I don’t have any negative feelings toward her. It’s just that she’s the nervous type, and has always relied too much on other people. Do you understand the situation?”
“I think so,” I said.
She crossed her legs, waiting for me to write something new on my pad. But I didn’t write anything down.
“She called us at ten one Sunday morning. Two Sundays—ten days—ago.”
I glanced at my desk calendar. “Sunday the third of September?”
“That’s right, the third. My mother-in-law called us at ten that morning,” the woman said. She closed her eyes as if recalling it. If we were in a Hitchcock movie, the screen would have started to ripple at this point and we’d have segued into a flashback. But this was no movie, and no flashback was forthcoming. She opened her eyes and went on. “My husband answered the phone. He’d been planning to play golf, but it had been raining hard since dawn, so he canceled. If only it hadn’t been raining, this never would have happened. I know I’m just second-guessing myself.”
September 3rd, golf, rain, canceled, mother-in-law—phoned. I wrote it all down.
“My mother-in-law said that she was having trouble breathing. She felt dizzy and couldn’t stand up. So my husband got dressed, and without even shaving he went down to her apartment. He told me that it wouldn’t take long and asked me to get breakfast ready.”
“What was he wearing?” I asked.
She rubbed her nose again lightly. “Chinos and a short-sleeved polo shirt. His shirt was dark gray. The trousers were cream-colored. Both items we’d bought from the J.Crew catalogue. My husband’s nearsighted and always wears glasses. Metal-framed Armanis. His shoes were gray New Balance. He didn’t have any socks on.”
I noted down all the details.
“Do you want to know his height and weight?”
“That would help,” I said.
“He’s five-eight, and weighs about one fifty-eight. Before we got married, he weighed about one thirty-five, but he’s put on some weight.”
I wrote down this information. I checked the tip of my pencil and exchanged it for another. I held the new pencil for a while, getting used to the feel.
“Do you mind if I go on?” she asked.
“Not at all,” I said.
She uncrossed and recrossed her legs. “I was getting ready to make pancakes when his mother called. I always make pancakes on Sunday morning. If he doesn’t play golf on Sundays, my husband eats a lot of pancakes. He loves them, with some crisp bacon on the side.”
No wonder the guy put on twenty pounds, I thought.
“Twenty-five minutes later my husband called me. He said his mother had settled down and he was on his way upstairs. ‘I’m starving,’ he told me. ‘Get breakfast ready so I can eat as soon as I get there.’ So I heated up the frying pan and started cooking the pancakes and bacon. I heated up the maple syrup as well. Pancakes aren’t difficult to make—it’s all a matter of timing and doing everything in the right order. I waited and waited, but he didn’t come home. The stack of pancakes on his plate was getting cold. I phoned my mother-in-law and asked her if my husband was still there. She said he’d left a long time ago.”
She brushed off an imaginary, metaphysical piece of lint on her skirt, just above the knee.
“My husband disappeared. He vanished into thin air. And I haven’t heard from him since. He disappeared somewhere between the twenty-fourth and twenty-sixth floors.”
“You contacted the police?”
“Of course I did,” she said, her lips curling a little in irritation. “When he wasn’t back by one o’clock, I phoned the police. But they didn’t put much effort into looking for him. A patrolman from the local police station came over, but when he saw there was no sign of a violent crime he couldn’t be bothered. ‘If he isn’t back in two days,’ he said, ‘go to the precinct and file a missing-persons report.’ The police seem to think that my husband wandered off somewhere on the spur of the moment, as if he were fed up with his life and just took off. But that’s ridiculous. I mean, think about it. My husband went down to his mother’s completely empty-handed—no wallet, driver’s license, credit cards, no watch. He hadn’t even shaved, for God’s sake. And he’d just phoned me and told me to get the pancakes ready. Somebody who’s running away from home wouldn’t call and ask you to make pancakes, would he?”
“You’re absolutely right,” I agreed. “But, tell me, when your husband went down to the twenty-fourth floor, did he take the stairs?”
“He never uses the elevator. He hates elevators. Says he can’t stand being cooped up in a confined place like that.”
“Still, you chose to live on the twenty-sixth floor of a high-rise?”
“We did. But he always uses the stairs. He doesn’t seem to mind—he says it’s good exercise and helps him to keep his weight down. Of course, it does take time.”
Pancakes, twenty pounds, stairs, elevator, I noted on my pad.
“So that’s the situation,” she said. “Will you take the case?”
No need to think about it. This was exactly the kind of case I’d been hoping for. I went through the motions of checking my schedule, though, and pretended to be shuffling a few things around. If you instantly agree to take a case, the client might suspect some ulterior motive.
“Luckily I’m free until later this afternoon,” I said, shooting my watch a glance. It was eleven thirty-five. “If you don’t mind, could you take me over to your building now? I’d like to see the last place you saw your husband.”
“I’d be happy to,” the woman said. She gave a small frown. “Does this mean you’re taking the case?”
“It does,” I replied.
“But we haven’t talked about the fee yet.”
“I don’t need any money.”
“I’m sorry?” she said, looking steadily at me.
“I don’t charge anything,” I explained, and smiled.
“But isn’t this your job?”
“No, it isn’t. This isn’t my profession. I’m just a volunteer, so I don’t get paid.”
“A volunteer?”
“Correct.”
“Still, you’ll need something for expenses…”
“No expenses needed. I’m totally a volunteer, so I can’t accept payment of any kind.”
The woman still looked perplexed.
“Fortunately, I have another source of income that provides enough to live on,” I explained. “I’m not doing this for the money. I’m just very interested in locating people who’ve disappeared. Or more precisely, people who’ve disappeared in a certain way. I won’t go into that—it’ll only complicate things. But I am pretty good at this sort of thing.”
“Tell me, is there some kind of religion or New Age thing behind all this?” she asked.
“Neither one. I don’t have a connection with any religion or New Age group.”
The woman glanced down at her shoes, perhaps contemplating how—if things got really weird—she might have to use the stiletto heels against me.
“My husband always told me not to trust anything that’s free,” the woman said. “I know this is rude to say, but he insisted there’s always a catch.”
“In most cases, I’d agree with him,” I said. “In our late-stage capitalist world, it’s hard to trust anything that’s free. Still, I hope you’ll trust me. You have to, if we’re going to get anywhere.”
She reached over for her Louis Vuitton purse, opened it with a refined click, and took out a thick sealed envelope. I couldn’t tell how much money was inside, but it looked like a lot.
“I brought something for expenses,” she said.
I shook my head. “I don’t accept any fee, gift, or payment of any kind. That’s the rule. If I did accept a fee or a gift, the actions I’ll be engaged in would be meaningless. If you have extra money and feel uncomfortable with not paying a fee, I suggest you make a donation to a charity—the Humane Society, the Fund for Traffic Victims’ Orphans, whichever group you like. If doing so makes you feel better.”
The woman frowned, took a deep breath, and returned the envelope to her purse. She placed the purse, once more fat and happy, back where it had been. She rubbed her nose again and looked at me, much like a retriever ready to spring forward and fetch a stick.
“The actions you’ll be engaged in,” she said in a somewhat dry tone.
I nodded and returned my worn pencil to the tray.
The woman with the sharp high heels took me to her building. She pointed out the door to her apartment (number 2609) and the door to her mother-in-law’s (number 2417). A broad staircase connected the two floors, and I could see that even a casual stroll between them would take no more than five minutes.
“One of the reasons my husband bought this condo was that the stairs are wide and well lit,” she said. “Most high-rise apartments skimp on the stairs. Wide staircases take up too much space, and, besides, most residents prefer the elevator. Condo developers like to spend their money on places that attract attention—a library, a marble lobby. My husband, though, insisted that the stairs were the critical element—the backbone of a building, he liked to say.”
I have to admit, it really was a memorable staircase. On the landing between the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth floors, next to a picture window, there was a sofa, a wall-length mirror, a standing ashtray, and a potted plant. Through the window you could see the bright sky and a couple of clouds drifting by. The window was sealed and couldn’t be opened.
“Is there a space like this on every floor?” I asked.
“No. There’s a little lounge on every fifth floor, not on every floor,” she said. “Would you like to see our apartment and my mother-in-law’s?”
“Not right now.”
“Since my husband disappeared, my mother-in-law’s nerves have taken a turn for the worse,” she said. She fluttered her hand. “It was quite a shock for her, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
“Of course,” I agreed. “I don’t think I’ll have to bother her.”
“I really appreciate that. And I’d like it if you would keep this from the neighbors, too. I haven’t told anyone that my husband has vanished.”
“Understood,” I said. “Do you usually use these stairs yourself?”
“No,” she said, raising her eyebrows slightly, as if she’d been unreasonably criticized. “Normally I take the elevator. When my husband and I are going out together, he leaves first and then I take the elevator and we meet up in the lobby. And when we come home, I take the elevator by myself and he comes up on foot. It’d be dangerous to attempt all these stairs in heels, and it’s hard on you physically.”
“I imagine so.”
I wanted to investigate things on my own, so I asked her to go have a word with the building super. “Tell him that the guy wandering around between the twenty-fourth and twenty-sixth floors is doing an insurance investigation,” I instructed her. “If someone thinks I’m a thief casing the place and calls the police, that would put me in a bit of a spot. I don’t have any real reason to be loitering here, after all.”
“I’ll tell him,” the woman said. She disappeared up the stairs. The sound of her heels rang out like the pounding of nails to post some ominous proclamation, then gradually faded into silence. I was left alone.
The first thing I did was walk the stairs from the twenty-sixth floor down to the twenty-fourth and back a total of three times. The first time, I walked at a normal pace, the next two times much more slowly, carefully observing everything around me. I focused so as not to miss any detail. I concentrated so hard I barely blinked. Every event leaves traces behind, and my job was to tease these out. The problem was that the staircase had been thoroughly scrubbed. There wasn’t a scrap of litter to be found. Not a single stain or dent, no butts in the ashtray. Nothing.
Going up and down the steps without a break had tired me out, so I rested for a minute on the sofa. It was covered in vinyl, and was not what you’d call high quality. But you had to admire the building management for having had the foresight to put a sofa there, where probably few people were likely ever to use it. Across from the sofa was the mirror. Its surface was spotless, and it was set at the perfect angle for the light shining in the window. I sat there for a time, gazing at my own reflection. Maybe on that Sunday that woman’s husband, the stockbroker, had taken a break here, too, and looked at his own reflection. At his own unshaven face.
I had shaved, of course, but my hair was getting a bit long. The hair behind my ears curled up like the fur of a long-haired hunting dog that had just paddled his way across a river. I made a mental note to go to a barber. I noticed that the color of my trousers didn’t match my shoes. I’d had no luck in coming up with a pair of socks that matched my outfit, either. Nobody would think it strange if I finally got my act together and did a little laundry. Otherwise, though, my reflection was just that—the same old me. A forty-five-year-old bachelor who couldn’t care less about stocks or Buddhism.
Come to think of it, Paul Gauguin had been a stockbroker, too. But he wanted to devote himself to painting, so one day he left his wife and kids for Tahiti. Wait a sec…I thought for a minute. No, Gauguin couldn’t have left his wallet behind, and if they’d had American Express cards back then I bet he would have taken one along. He was going all the way to Tahiti, after all. I can’t picture him saying to his wife, “Hey, honey, I’ll be back in a minute—make sure the pancakes are ready,” before he vanished. If you’re planning to disappear, you have to go about it in a systematic way.
I stood up from the sofa, and as I made my way up the stairs again I started to mull over the notion of freshly made pancakes. I concentrated as fiercely as I could and tried to picture the scene: you’re a forty-year-old stockbroker, it’s Sunday morning, raining hard outside, and you’re on your way home to a stack of piping hot pancakes. The more I thought about it, the more it whetted my appetite. I’d had only one small apple since morning.
Maybe I should zip over to Denny’s and dig into some pancakes, I thought. I’d passed a sign for Denny’s on the drive here. It was probably even close enough to walk. Not that Denny’s made great pancakes—the butter and the syrup weren’t up to my standards—but they would do. Truth be told, I’m a huge pancake fan. Saliva began to well up in my mouth. But I shook my head and tried to banish all pancake thoughts for the time being. I blew away all the clouds of illusion. Save the pancakes for later, I cautioned myself. You’ve still got work to do.
“I should have asked her if her husband had any hobbies,” I said to myself. “Maybe he actually was into painting.”
But that didn’t make sense—any guy who was so into painting he’d abandon his family wouldn’t be the type to play golf every Sunday. Can you imagine Gauguin or van Gogh or Picasso decked out in golf shoes, kneeling down on the tenth green, trying to read the putt? I couldn’t.
I sat down on the sofa again and looked at my watch. It was one thirty-two. I shut my eyes and focused on a spot in my head. My mind a total blank, I gave myself up to the sands of time and let the flow take me wherever it wanted. Then I opened my eyes and looked at my watch. It was one fifty-seven. Twenty-five minutes had vanished somewhere. Not bad, I told myself. A pointless way of whittling away time. Not bad at all.
I looked at the mirror again and saw my usual self there. I raised my right hand, and my reflection raised its left. I raised my left hand and it raised its right. I made as if to lower my right hand, then quickly lowered the left; my reflection made as if to lower its left hand, then quickly lowered its right. The way it should be. I got up from the sofa and walked the twenty-five flights down to the lobby.
I visited the staircase every day around eleven a.m. The building super and I got pretty friendly (the boxes of chocolates I brought him didn’t hurt), and I was allowed to wander the building at will. All told, I made about two hundred round-trips between the twenty-fourth and twenty-sixth floors. When I got tired, I took a rest on the sofa, gazed out the window at the sky, checked my reflection in the mirror. I’d gone to the barber and got a good trim, done all my laundry, and was able to wear trousers and socks that actually matched, vastly reducing the chances that people would be whispering about me behind my back.
No matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find a single clue, but I wasn’t discouraged. Locating a key clue was a lot like training an uncooperative animal. It requires patience and focus. Not to mention intuition.
As I went to the apartment building every day, I discovered that there were other people who used the staircase. I’d find candy wrappers on the floor, a Marlboro butt in the ashtray, a discarded newspaper.
One Sunday afternoon, I passed a man who was running up the stairs. A short guy in his thirties, with a serious look, in a green jogging outfit and Asics running shoes. He was wearing a large Casio watch.
“Hi there,” I said. “Do you have a minute?”
“Sure,” the man said, and pushed a button on his watch. He took a couple of deep breaths. His Nike tank top was sweaty at the chest.
“Do you always run up and down these stairs?” I asked.
“I do. Up to the thirty-second floor. Going down, though, I take the elevator. It’s dangerous to run down stairs.”
“You do this every day?”
“No, work keeps me too busy. I do a few round-trips on the weekends. If I get off work early, I sometimes run during the week.”
“You live in this building?”
“Sure,” the runner said. “On the seventeenth floor.”
“I was wondering if you know Mr. Kurumizawa, who lives on the twenty-sixth floor?”
“Mr. Kurumizawa?”
“He’s a stockbroker, wears metal-framed Armani glasses, and always uses the stairs. Five feet eight, forty years old.”
The runner gave it some thought. “Yeah, I do know that guy. I talked with him once. I pass him on the staircase sometimes when I’m running. I’ve seen him sitting on the sofa. He’s one of those guys who use the stairs because they hate the elevator, right?”
“That’s the guy,” I replied. “Besides him, are there a lot of people who use the stairs every day?”
“Yeah, there are,” he said. “Not that many, maybe, but there are a few you might call regulars. People who don’t like to take elevators. And there are two other people I’ve seen who run up the stairs like me. There’s no good jogging course around here, so we use the stairs. There’re also a few people who walk up the stairs for exercise. I think more people use these stairs than in most apartment buildings—they’re so well lit, spacious, and clean.”
“Do you happen to know any of these people’s names?”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” the runner said. “I just know their faces. We say hi as we pass each other, but I don’t know their names. This is a huge building.”
“I see. Well, thanks for your time,” I said. “Sorry to keep you. And good luck with the jogging.”
The man pressed the button on his stopwatch and resumed his jog.