A Woman's Nails (10 page)

Earlier in the day, Abazuré told me the students were happy to have me as their teacher, that I was doing a wonderful job. Compliments are cheap in this country, like smiles at McDonald's, they don't cost a cent, but
Abazuré was sincere, eerily so.

So many of the adult students have declared me “a great teacher” and introduced their friends to the school that most of my morning classes are now filled to capacity. Even dreary old Yumi after sitting in on one of my evening lessons has rediscovered something to be enthusiastic about. All this praise depresses me because there is nothing that makes me feel more like the loser than being told how well I perform tasks embarrassingly beneath my potential. The compliment jars my confidence as malignantly as insults; I feel my dreams begin to slip through my fingers.

As I ride the train, pressed between the carcasses of salarymen and office ladies, an appalling realization finally begins to seep in. The deposit I paid and the contract I signed with Abazuré as my guarantor have all but indentured me. I was so eager to escape, at any cost, from the
inaka
, from the condominium in the middle of nowhere, that I didn't give fuck about anything else. Now I do. As much as I am loath to admit it, I am probably looking at another two years performing the old
eikaiwa
soft-shoe routine. God, how depressing!

I look at the meat around me. Do they have dreams as well, or have those been extinguished by damp circumstance and necessity? What possesses them to be packed like cattle into trains, to work until they can barely stand? Just to pay off the mortgage on a place where they can drop their weary bones every night? I look at the expressionless faces, the vacant look in the eyes. Each day inertia alone manages to carry them through. Were they ever motivated by dreams, inspired by love? Were they once animals in the sack, passionately thrashing about, lusting for life itself? Or, have they always been pathetic shells of men feigning impotence if only to have an extra half hour of blessed sleep? God help them. And God help me.

There isn't a single light on in the condominium when I enter the front door. Not a sound, save the sickly hum of the second-hand refrigerator, to be heard either. Friday evening, alone with nothing in particular to do. Again. I've come to hate the weekends, hate how they remind me how little there is to look forward to after working all week. I couldn't have been born to live this way.

I plop down on the woolly carpet in the living room. In the absence of the static work provided, my thoughts tune into Mie. As surely as the tide returns, my thoughts return to her. Where she is? What she’s doing? Who’s she with? Is she thinking about me, wondering these very same things, or is her mind elsewhere? Is there still a pulse to be found in the relationship we once had? Or am I wasting my time waiting for her to discover it, waiting for her to come back? Can the love we had be resuscitated, or is it as hopeless as a naked cadaver lying on a cold stainless steel shelf? It tortures me to think that she may have moved on, that I may have been forgotten when the pain in my h
eart is still so fresh.

What the hell am I still in Japan for? If only I could take my deposit back, erase my name and
inkan
from the apartment contract, and go back to the States. Coming to this country derailed me, and every day that passes is another day further off course.

I consider calling Aya, having her sneak out of her home to spend the night with me, to have her distract me with those glorious breasts of hers. But the way I'm feeling tonight, I doubt I'd find much consolation in screwing a high school girl. As surely as she would oblige me, I know the morning would greet me more depressed than ever, bitter that it weren't someone I loved lying next to me.

With the move only a day away, it makes sense to stop moping and start getting my things together, to pack up my clothes and belongings. I never quite settled into the condominium. Lacking the resignation to a life in the countryside, I have lived for the most part out of a suitcase, unpacking things as necessity required and hanging them up in the closet or putting them away in a drawer when I was
finished. It doesn't take long.

My "roommates" are in town and probably won't return until Sunday evening, meaning I'll have vacated the condo by the time they return. I’ve heard stories of Japanese families digging themselves so deep into debt that they're left with only two options: packing up what they can and moving out of their homes surreptitiously in the middle of the night, so-called
yonige
, or committing
ikka shinjû
, or a family suicide. Considering that I haven’t mentioned my
move to the “roommates,”
I kind of feel like I'm
yonige
-ing myself.

You think they'll miss me? Think they'll even notice that I'm gone?

4

I take a small box containing Mie's pajamas, her yellow toothbrush and overnight kit, what she called her
o-tomari
setto
, from one of the drawers and place it in the clear plastic container where I keep photo albums and souveni
rs from my first year in Japan.

It’s been months since I last opened the albums. Fear of an emotional onslaught has prevented me from summoning Lazarus out of his tomb, from taking the albums out and reviving the past.

I take them out now, one for nearly every month shared with Mie, with the exception of October. I still can't bring myself to have the film from that month developed. They remain tucked away in a tin can, interned like dry bones and ashes.

Some of the happiest memories of my life are recorded on the pages of the albums. I can't help myself, can't keep myself from taking the first album out, from cracking it open, and diving headfirst before checking the depth.

My twenty-sixth birthday: t
here’s Mie sitting among a group of some two dozen of my students who've crammed into one of the six-
tatami
mat rooms at my old a
partment. She's beaming at me—so
beautiful, so vibrant, so engaging. She didn't know if she would be able to make it, if she would be able to get away from work. I told her thirty people would be coming to the party. She was the only person, though, that I really wanted to celebrate
with. “
Wakatta
.
Gambarimasu
,”
she sa
id. Okay, I'll try to be there.

I was on tenterhooks the whole party, my eyes turning expectantly towards the front door every time I heard footsteps coming up the stairwell. When she did come, I could barely c
ontain my happiness. I shouted “Mie-chan”
as she walked in through the door. That night after everyone had left we made love for the second time.

On the following page, Mie and I are at the
izakaya
near the apartment we sometimes went to. In the first snapshot, Mie is pouring
sak
é
for me from a small earthenware
tokkuri
bottle into the tiny
choko
cup I'm holding. Before us on the counters is a small plate of grilled mackerel with
daikon oroshi
(grated radish) before us. It was my first time to try it. There were also dishes with a beef and potatoes
nimono
, and
tempura
on white paper. In the next photo, I'm pouring soy sauce into the
choko
of the man next to me. Mie's laughing, but the man doesn't quite know what to make of my little American
jokku
.

On the next page, is an adorable letter Mie sent to me after returning from a trip she took with all of her co-w
orkers to the island of Hokkaidô
. She included several photos of herself taken while there. The letter mentions how mild the summe
r in Hokkaidô is compared to Kyûshû
, the places visited and sights seen, the wonderful seafood she ate so much of that she's afraid she has put on weight . . . again. It closes with a few lines that reassured me when I had already st
arted to fall in love with her:

“
I've been thinking a lot about you recently. I don't quite understand how I'm feeling, but I miss you so muc
h and want to see you. Call me.”

When my eyes start to mist up, I put the photo album back into the storage container, clamp it shut, and then finish packing up my things. After a meal of
tom yum gai
soup, I sit down in front of the television and flip through the channels for something to get my mind off Mie. Without satellite or cable, flipping through the channels is like jogging around a short track. Around and around and around. A variety show featuring pop music, a variety show featuring a
manzai
comedy duo, a dry documentary on NHK, the humorless state-run broadcaster, an English language instruction program featuring sad excuses for foreigners hamming it up on NHK's education channel, another variety show featuring
manzai
comedians and pop music, and finally rounding up the lap, an old Schwarzenegger film dubbed in Japanese.

The phone rings.

5

“
Moshi-moshi
?”

“Hello. Is Chris there?” asks a soft, barely audible voice.

“No, he isn’t,” I reply, turning the TV’s volume down.

“Is this Peador?”

“Yeah.”

“This is Machiko.” It’s Chris’s girlfriend.

“Oh, hi, Machiko.”

“Do you know where Chris is?” she asks timidly.

“No.”

My roommate is an affable enough person, but seldom has much to say to me whenever we happen to find ourselves at the condominium at the same time.

She asks if I am alone, what I’m doing, what my plans are for the weekend. Why the sudden interest in old Peador, I wonder. Is this Machiko a player? Is the quiet demeanor just a ruse?

“Yes,” I reply.

“I don’t believe you,” she says.

“I really am alone, regardless of whether you believe it or not.”

“You have a
lot of girlfriends, don’t you?”

I’ve been getting this a lot. I tell her I’m not seeing anyone in particular.

“Chris and I, we saw you Saturday evening with two girls. You were ho
lding hands with both of them.”

Saturday night? Holding hands?

“Oh, them,”
I say. “They’re just friends.”

Two former students of mi
ne had come down from Kitakyûshû
to see me. Sweet girls, both of them, terribly kind, but n
ot what I’d call my cup of tea.

“We were drunk,” I offer as an explanation. I had completely forgotten about that.

“And I saw you with a high school girl near the park before that. Y
ou were holding her hand, too.”

Holding hands with Aya? Now that I definitely did not do, but there’s no use in protesting;
Machiko has convinced herself.

“Chris tells me you’re a playboy, a real lady-killer. Are you? Are you a lady-killer?”

This gives me a nice and long overdue laugh.

“Please be nice to them,” she says.

“Okay, I promise. Cross my heart.”

“I mean it,” she insists and then I can hear the gravity in her soft voice. “Peador,
please
be nice to them.”

“I’ll try,” I say.

“Do you know when Chris will come home?”

“To tell you the truth, I have no idea,” I say, adding that he sometimes doesn’t come back at all.
Oops
!

The silence on the other end of the phone speaks volumes. It was a simple mistake; I was under the assumption that Chris had been spending the nights with Machiko. Now that I realize that hasn’t been the case, I whip
up a nice and fluffy white lie.

“Chris is busy, as I’m sure he’s told you, Machiko, lots of overtime. And he’s also helping a friend which . . .” I have to pull these fluffy white lies out of my arse because I don’t know Jack shit about Chris’s private life. “He told me he sometimes stayed at a co-worker’s place in town, a Tony-something, whenever
he misses the last train . . .”

The last bit has the merit of being based on more than the threadbare fabric of my imagination: it stems from hearsay.

Machiko remains silent. I can’t tell whether she has bought any of it, or whether she was able
to understand what I told her.

After a long, pain-filled sigh, she speaks up. “I want you to give him a message.”

“Sure.”