If he had an embarrassing wish, it was this: He would be a European from a long time ago. He didn’t want to be a king or a general—he was too old for such simple wishes. If anything, he wanted a very simple life filled with nature, books, and perhaps a few children. He knew that later in life, he also wanted to be let alone to read and to be quiet. In his new life in Tokyo, he had discovered jazz music, and he liked going to bars by himself and listening to records that the owners would select from bins. Listening to live music was too expensive, but he hoped that one day, when he had a job again, he would be able to go to a jazz club. At the bar, he would have one drink that he’d barely touch to pay for his seat, then he’d go back to his room, read some more, write letters to his family, then go to sleep.
Every few weeks, he saved some of his allowance and took an inexpensive train ride home and visited his family. At the beginning of each month, Hansu took him for a sushi lunch to remind Noa of his mission in the world for some higher purpose that neither could articulate fully. His life felt ideal, and Noa was grateful.
That morning, as he walked across campus to his George Eliot seminar, he heard someone calling his name.
“Bando-san, Bando-san,” a woman shouted. It was the radical beauty on campus, Akiko Fumeki.
Noa stopped and waited. She had never spoken to him before. He was, in fact, a little afraid of her. She was always saying contrary things to Professor Kuroda, a soft-spoken woman who had grown up and studied in England. Though the professor was polite, Noa could tell that she didn’t like Akiko much; the other students, especially the females, could barely tolerate her. Noa knew it was safer to keep his distance from the students that the professors disliked. In the seminar room, Noa sat one seat away from the professor, while Akiko sat in the very back of the room below the high windows.
“Ah, Bando-san, how are you?” Akiko asked, flushed and out of breath. She spoke to him casually, as if they had talked many times before.
“Well, thank you. How are you?”
“So what do you think of Eliot’s final masterpiece?” she asked.
“It’s excellent. Everything by George Eliot is perfect.”
“Nonsense. Adam Bede is a bore. I almost died reading that thing. Silas Marner is barely tolerable.”
“Well, Adam Bede was not as exciting or developed as Middlemarch, but it remains a wonderful depiction of a brave woman and an honest man—”
“Oh, please.” Akiko rolled her eyes, and she laughed at him.
Noa laughed, too. He knew she was a Sociology major, because everyone had had to introduce himself or herself on the first day of class.
“You have read everything by George Eliot? That’s impressive,” he said, never having met anyone else who had done so.
“You’re the one who’s read absolutely everything. It’s sickening, and I’m almost irritated at you for doing so. But I admire it, too. Although, if you like everything you read, I can’t take you that seriously. Perhaps you didn’t think about these books long enough.” She said this with a serious face, not in the least bit concerned about offending him.
“Soo nee.” Noa smiled. It had not occurred to him that any book that a professor would choose and admire could be inferior even in relation to that author’s own works. Their professor had loved Adam Bede and Silas Marner.
“You sit so close to the professor. I think she’s in love with you.”
In shock, Noa halted.
“Kuroda-san is sixty years old. Maybe seventy.” Noa moved toward the building door and opened it for her.
“You think women want to stop having sex just because they’re sixty? You’re absurd. She’s probably the most romantic woman in Waseda. She’s read far too many novels. You’re perfect for her. She’d marry you tomorrow. Oh, the scandal! Your George Eliot married a young man, too, you know. Although her groom did try to kill himself on their honeymoon!” Akiko laughed out loud, and the students who were walking up the staircase to their classroom stared at her. Everyone seemed puzzled by their interaction, since Noa was almost as famous as the campus beauty, but for being aloof.
Once in their classroom, she sat at her old seat in the back, and Noa returned to his seat by the professor. He opened his notebook and retrieved his fountain pen, then looked down at the sheet of white paper lined in pale blue ink. He was thinking about Akiko; she was even prettier up close.
Kuroda-san sat down to give her lecture. She wore a pea-green sweater over her Peter Pan–collar white blouse and a brown tweed skirt. Her tiny feet were shod with a childish pair of Mary Janes. She was so small and thin that she gave the impression that she could almost fly away like a sheet of paper or a dry leaf.