After the Quake (3 page)

“What? Your wife’s note?”

“Uh-huh.”

“No kidding,” Shimao said, lowering her head to Komura’s chest again. He felt her earring against his skin like a secret object.

“Come to think of it,” Komura said, “what’s the
something
inside that box I brought up here?”

“Is it bothering you?”

“It wasn’t bothering me before. But now, I don’t know, it’s starting to.”

“Since when?”

“Just now.”

“All of a sudden?”

“Yeah, once I started thinking about it, all of a sudden.”

“I wonder why it’s started to bother you now, all of a sudden?”

Komura glared at the ceiling for a minute to think. “I wonder.”

They listened to the moaning of the wind. The wind: it came from someplace unknown to Komura, and it blew past to someplace unknown to him.

“I’ll tell you why,” Shimao said in a low voice. “It’s because that box contains the
something
that was inside you. You didn’t know that when you carried it here and gave it to Keiko with your own hands. Now, you’ll never get it back.”

Komura lifted himself from the mattress and looked down at the woman. Tiny nose, moles on the earlobe. In the room’s deep silence, his heart beat with a loud, dry sound. His bones cracked as he leaned forward. For one split second, Komura realized that he was on the verge of committing an act of overwhelming violence.

“Just kidding,” Shimao said when she saw the look on his face. “I said the first thing that popped into my head. It was a lousy joke. I’m sorry. Try not to let it bother you. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Komura forced himself to calm down and, after a glance around the room, sank his head into his pillow again. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The huge bed stretched out around him like a nocturnal sea. He heard the freezing wind. The fierce pounding of his heart shook his bones.

“Are you starting to feel a
little
as if you’ve come a long way?” Shimao asked.

“Hmm. Now I feel as if I’ve come a
very
long way,” Komura answered honestly.

Shimao traced a complicated design on Komura’s chest with her fingertip, as if casting a magic spell.

“But really,” she said, “you’re just at the beginning.”

landscape with flatiron

Junko was watching television when the phone rang a few minutes before midnight. Keisuke sat in the corner of the room wearing headphones, eyes half closed, head swinging back and forth as his long fingers flew over the strings of his electric guitar. He was practicing a fast passage and obviously had no idea the phone was ringing. Junko picked up the receiver.

“Did I wake you?” Miyake asked in his familiar muffled Osaka accent.

“Nah,” Junko said. “We’re still up.”

“I’m at the beach. You should
see
all this driftwood! We can make a big one this time. Can you come down?”

“Sure,” Junko said. “Let me change clothes. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

She slipped on a pair of tights and then her jeans. On top she wore a turtleneck sweater, and she stuffed a pack of cigarettes into the pocket of her woolen coat. Purse, matches, key ring. She nudged Keisuke in the back with her foot. He tore off his headphones.

“I’m going for a bonfire on the beach,” she said.

“Miyake again?” Keisuke asked with a scowl. “You gotta be kidding. It’s February, ya know. Twelve o’clock at night! You’re gonna go make a bonfire
now
?”

“That’s OK,
you
don’t have to come. I’ll go by myself.”

Keisuke sighed. “Nah, I’ll come. Gimme a minute to change.”

He turned off his amp, and over his pajamas he put on pants, a sweater, and a down jacket which he zipped up to his chin. Junko wrapped a scarf around her neck and put on a knitted hat.

“You guys’re crazy,” Keisuke said as they took the path down to the beach. “What’s so great about bonfires?”

The night was cold, but there was no wind at all. Words left their mouths to hang frozen in midair.

“What’s so great about Pearl Jam?” Junko said. “Just a lot of noise.”

“Pearl Jam has ten million fans all over the world,” Keisuke said.

“Well, bonfires have had fans all over the world for fifty thousand years,” Junko said.

“You’ve got something there,” Keisuke said.

“People will be lighting fires long after Pearl Jam is gone.”

“You’ve got something there, too.” Keisuke pulled his right hand out of his pocket and put his arm around Junko’s shoulders. “The trouble is, I don’t have a damn thing to do with anything fifty thousand years ago—or fifty thousand years from now, either. Nothing. Zip. What’s important is
now.
Who knows when the world is gonna end? Who can think about the future? The only thing that matters is whether I can get my stomach full
right now
and get it up
right now.
Right?”

They climbed the steps to the top of the breakwater. Miyake was down in his usual spot on the beach, collecting driftwood of all shapes and sizes and making a neat pile. One huge log must have taken a major effort to drag to the spot.

The light of the moon transformed the shoreline into a sharpened sword blade. The winter waves were strangely hushed as they washed over the sand. Miyake was the only one on the beach.

“Pretty good, huh?” he said with a puff of white breath.

“Incredible!” Junko said.

“This happens every once in a while. You know, we had that stormy day with the big waves. Lately, I can tell from the sound, like, ‘Today some great firewood’s going to wash up.’ ”

“OK, OK, we know how good you are,” Keisuke said, rubbing his hands together. “Now let’s get warm. It’s so damn cold, it’s enough to shrivel your balls.”

“Hey, take it easy. There’s a
right
way to do this. First you’ve got to
plan
it. And when you’ve got it all arranged so it’ll work without a hitch, you light it slow-like. You can’t rush it. ‘The patient beggar earns his keep.’ ”

“Yeah,” Keisuke said. “Like the patient hooker earns her keep.”

Miyake shook his head. “You’re too young to be making such crummy jokes all the time,” he said.

Miyake had done a skillful job of interlacing the bigger logs and smaller scraps until his pile had come to resemble some kind of avant-garde sculpture. Stepping back a few paces, he would examine in detail the form he had constructed, adjust some of the pieces, then circle around to the other side for another look, repeating the process several times. As always. All he had to do was look at the way the pieces of wood were combined to begin having mental images of the subtlest movement of the rising flames, the way a sculptor can imagine the pose of a figure hidden in a lump of stone.

Miyake took his time, but once he had everything arranged to his satisfaction, he nodded as if to say to himself, That’s it: perfect. Next, he bunched up sheets of newspaper that he had brought along, slipped them through the gaps at the bottom of the pile, and lit them with a plastic cigarette lighter. Junko took her cigarettes from her pocket, put one in her mouth, and struck a match. Narrowing her eyes, she stared at Miyake’s hunched back and balding head. This was it: the one heart-stopping moment of the whole procedure. Would the fire catch? Would it erupt in giant flames?

The three stared in silence at the mountain of driftwood. The sheets of newspaper flared up, rose swaying in flames for a moment, then shriveled and went out. After that there was nothing. It didn’t work, thought Junko. The wood must have been wetter than it looked.

She was on the verge of losing hope when a plume of white smoke shot up from the pile. With no wind to disperse it, the smoke became an unbroken thread rising straight toward the sky. The pile must have caught fire somewhere, but still there was no sign of flames.

No one said a word. Even the talkative Keisuke kept his mouth shut tight, hands shoved in coat pockets. Miyake hunkered down on the sand. Junko folded her arms across her chest, cigarette in hand. She would puff on it occasionally, as if suddenly recalling that it was there.

As usual, Junko thought about Jack London’s “To Build a Fire.” It was the story of a man traveling alone through the snowy Alaskan interior and his attempts to light a fire. He would freeze to death unless he could make it catch. The sun was going down. Junko hadn’t read much fiction, but that one short story she had read again and again, ever since her teacher had assigned it as an essay topic during the summer vacation of her first year in high school. The scene of the story would always come vividly to mind as she read. She could feel the man’s fear and hope and despair as if they were her own; she could sense the very pounding of his heart as he hovered on the brink of death. Most important of all, though, was the fact that the man was fundamentally longing for death. She knew that for sure. She couldn’t explain how she knew, but she knew it from the start. Death was really what he wanted. He
knew
that it was the right ending for him. And yet he had to go on fighting with all his might. He had to fight against an overwhelming adversary in order to survive. What most shook Junko was this deep-rooted contradiction.

The teacher ridiculed her view. “Death is really what he wanted? That’s a new one for me! And strange! Quite ‘original,’ I’d have to say.” He read her conclusion aloud before the class, and everybody laughed.

But Junko knew. All of them were wrong. Otherwise, how could the ending of the story be so quiet and beautiful?

“Uh, Mr. Miyake,” Keisuke ventured, “don’t you think the fire has gone out?”

“Don’t worry, it’s caught. It’s just getting ready to flare up. See how it’s smoking? You know what they say: ‘Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.’ ”

“Well, you know what else they say: ‘Where there’s blood, there’s a hard-on.’ ”

“Is that all you ever talk about?”

“No, but how can you be so sure it hasn’t gone out?”

“I just know. It’s going to flare up.”

“How did you come to master such an art, Mr. Miyake?”

“I wouldn’t call it an ‘art.’ I learned it when I was a Boy Scout. When you’re a Scout, like it or not, you learn everything there is to know about building a fire.”

“I see,” said Keisuke. “A Boy Scout, huh?”

“That’s not the whole story, of course. I have a kind of talent, too. I don’t mean to brag, but when it comes to making a bonfire I have a special talent that most folks just don’t have.”

“It must give you a lot of pleasure, but I don’t suppose this talent of yours makes you lots of money.”

“True. None at all,” Miyake said with a smile.

As he had predicted, a few small flames began to flicker at the center of the pile, accompanied by a faint crackling sound. Junko let out a long-held breath. Now there was nothing to worry about. They would have their bonfire. Facing the newborn flames, the three began to stretch out their hands. For the next few minutes there was nothing more to be done but to watch in silence as, little by little, the flames gained in strength. Those people of fifty thousand years ago must have felt like this when they held their hands out to the flames, thought Junko.

“I understand you’re from Kobe, Mr. Miyake,” Keisuke said in a cheery voice as if the thought had suddenly popped into his head. “Did you have relatives or something in the Kansai earthquake last month?”

“I’m not sure,” said Miyake. “I don’t have any ties with Kobe anymore. Not for years.”

“Years? Well, you sure haven’t lost your Kansai accent.”

“No? I can’t tell, myself.”

“I do declare, you must be joking,” said Keisuke in exaggerated Kansai tones.

“Cut the shit, Keisuke. The last thing I want to hear is some Ibaragi asshole trying to talk to me in a phony Kansai accent. You eastern farm boys’d be better off tearing around on your motorcycles during the slack season.”

“Whoa, I sure rubbed
you
the wrong way! You
look
like a nice quiet guy, but you’ve got one hell of a mouth. And this place is Ibaraki, not ‘Ibaragi.’ All you Kansai types are ready to put us eastern ‘farm boys’ down at the drop of a hat. I give up,” Keisuke said. “But seriously, though, did anybody get hurt? You must have had somebody you know in Kobe. Have you seen the news on TV?”

“Let’s change the subject,” Miyake said. “Whiskey?”

“You bet.”

“Jun?”

“Just a little,” Junko said.

Miyake pulled a thin metal flask from the pocket of his leather jacket and handed it to Keisuke, who twisted off the cap and poured some whiskey into his mouth without touching his lips to the rim. He glugged it down and sucked in a sharp breath.

“That is
great
!” he said. “This has
got
to be a twenty-one-year-old single malt! Super stuff ! Aged in oak. You can hear the roar of the sea and the breath of Scottish angels.”

“Give me a break, Keisuke. It’s the cheapest Suntory you can buy.”

Next it was Junko’s turn. She took the flask from Keisuke, poured a little into the cap, and tried a few tiny sips. She grimaced, but chased after that special warm feeling as the liquid moved down from her throat to her stomach. The core of her body grew a touch warmer. Next, Miyake took one quiet swallow, and Keisuke followed him with another gulp. As the flask moved from hand to hand, the bonfire grew in size and strength—not all at once, but in slow, gradual stages. That was the great thing about Miyake’s bonfires. The spread of the flames was soft and gentle, like an expert caress, with nothing rough or hurried about it—their only purpose was to warm people’s hearts.

Junko never said much in the presence of the fire. She hardly moved. The flames accepted all things in silence, drank them in, understood, and forgave. A family, a
real
family, was probably like this, she thought.

Junko came to this town in May of her third year in high school. With her father’s seal and passbook, she had taken three hundred thousand yen from the bank, stuffed all the clothes she could into a Boston bag, and run away from home. She transferred from one train to the next at random until she had come all the way from Tokorozawa to this little seaside spot in Ibaraki Prefecture, a town she had never even heard of. At the realtor’s across from the station she found a one-room apartment, and the following week took a job at a convenience store on the coast highway. To her mother she wrote:
Don’t worry about
me, and please don’t look for me, I’m doing fine.

She was sick to death of school and couldn’t stand the sight of her father. She had gotten on well with him when she was little. On weekends and holidays the two of them had gone everywhere together. She felt proud and strong to walk down the street holding his hand. But when her periods started near the end of elementary school, and her pubic hair began to grow, and her chest began to swell, he started to look at her in a strange new way. After she passed five-foot-six in the third year of junior high, he hardly spoke to her at all.

Plus, her grades were nothing to boast about. Near the top of her class when she entered middle school, by graduation time it would have been easier to count her place from the bottom, and she barely made it into high school. Which is not to say that she was stupid: she just couldn’t concentrate. She could never finish anything she started. Whenever she tried to concentrate, her head would ache deep inside. It hurt her to breathe, and the rhythm of her heart became irregular. Attending school was absolute torture.

Not long after she settled in this new town, she met Keisuke. He was two years older, and a great surfer. He was tall, dyed his hair brown, and had beautiful straight teeth. He had settled in Ibaraki for its good surf, and formed a rock band with some friends. He was registered at a second-rate private college, but hardly ever went to campus and had zero prospects of graduating. His parents ran an old respected sweetshop in the city of Mito, and he could have carried on the family business as a last resort, but he had no intention of settling down as a sweetshop owner. All he wanted was to ride around with his friends in his Datsun truck, surf, and play the guitar in their amateur band— an easygoing lifestyle that anyone could see was not going to last forever.

Junko got friendly with Miyake after she moved in with Keisuke. Miyake seemed to be in his mid-forties—a small, slim guy with glasses, a long narrow face, and short hair. He was clean-shaven, but he had such a heavy beard that by sundown each day his face was covered in shadows. He liked to wear a faded dungaree shirt or aloha shirt, which he never tucked into his baggy old chinos, and on his feet he wore white, worn-out sneakers. In winter, he would put on a creased leather jacket and sometimes a baseball cap. Junko had never seen him in any other kind of outfit. Everything he wore, though, was spotlessly clean.