The Earthquake Bird (12 page)

I’d never heard him sing before, or say that he wanted to. But then, I’d never heard his speech slur with drunkenness before,
either.

“Teach me a Japanese song.” Lily was standing now, swaying a little as she sipped from her can. “I want to learn a Japanese
song.”

Teiji closed his eyes and I thought he was drifting off into his own world. After a few seconds he opened them, smiled at
Lily.

“All right. I’ll teach you an easy one. Everyone in Japan knows this song.”

And, slowly, the three of us sang “Ue o Muite Arukou” together. Lily couldn’t grasp the words but sang loudly with meaningless
approximations and didn’t listen when I tried to translate the meaning for her.

Ue o muite

Arukou
,

“Walk with your face upward,” I chopped in.

Namidaga koborenaiyou ni
,

“So as not to let the tears fall,”

Omoidasu, haru no hi
,

Hitori botchi no yoru
.

“When, on a lonely evening, you are reminded of a spring day.” I repeated the last line in my head. “Or is it the other way
around? It’s difficult to translate.”

Lily didn’t mind what the lyrics were, but she sang several times.

“I’m really too drunk.” Teiji opened another can of beer and started the next verse of the song.

“Let’s walk around. The night is beautiful.” Lily spun on her heels and giggled.

We collected our things and began to walk. As we stood I noticed that Teiji had left his camera on the ground. He never forgot
his camera. I picked it up and slung it around my neck. I would produce it when he noticed it was missing. Lily started to
sing again and Teiji tried to correct her mistakes.

Behind them, I slipped the lens cap off the camera, raised the camera to my eye and, though it was harder to focus my own
eyes than it was to focus the lens, I managed to catch them both in the square of the viewfinder. The flash was bright but
they continued walking and singing as if they’d noticed nothing. I put the camera away and chased after Teiji. Suddenly it
seemed vital that I return it to him.

Now I have changed my mind and I see that it was probably this photograph in Yoyogi Park, rather than the one in the noodle
shop, that was my downfall. Or else Lucy is too superstitious, looking for clues in everything when in fact there are none
in anything.

In the early hours of the morning we were walking the streets, following a road uphill toward Teiji’s apartment. Lily kept
falling to the ground and saying she would sleep on the pavement and we were not to worry. Each time, we picked her up between
us and hauled her a few steps farther. Lily was not heavy but alcohol had depleted Teiji’s usual strength and coordination.
He kept walking into me and I found I was doing most of the work. Teiji spotted a small dolly at the side of the road, the
kind used for moving boxes around a warehouse or unloading goods from a van. He motioned for me to follow him. We lifted Lily
onto it and pushed her farther up the road. Her head rolled backward and her red tuft of hair hung over the side of the platform.
Her legs and arms seemed to fall in every direction. She looked like a crushed spider. The sky was the prickly darkness of
early morning just before dawn.

Five minutes later Lily was walking again and I was lying on the dolly. By the time we reached the top of the street, the
sky was lighter and now I was pushing the dolly with Teiji and Lily squashed on it together. I stopped to rest and enjoy the
view. Ahead of me, between the buildings on the almost empty road, the sun hung in the sky, a huge pink ball, swelling and
glowing before my eyes. I pushed the dolly to an alley that ran between two shops, wedged it against a wall so it couldn’t
slide around, and collapsed on top of Lily and Teiji. My head was full of the noise of our voices singing in the park, and
the dawn chorus.

How could I have known, in the midst of that cacophony, the size of the silence that would soon fall upon Tokyo, upon Lily,
Teiji, and Lucy?

A
week or two after our night in the park, Lily came to visit. It was late and I wasn’t expecting her but I recognized her
finger on my doorbell in the same way that I knew Teiji’s. Teiji’s ring was soft but even. Lily pressed too hard and too long,
a statement of nervousness, a lack of self-control.

I opened the door. She’d been crying.

“Come in. What’s wrong?”

“I’m not disturbing you, am I? I don’t want to get in your way if Teiji’s here.”

“He isn’t. He’s working late tonight. The restaurant’s busy.”

“Oh, right.”

She followed me into my main room, hovered in the middle.

“Sit down.”

“Ta. I’m really sorry about this. I don’t know why I didn’t phone first. I just got up and came out. I didn’t know who else
to go to. This is a lovely apartment. Nice and uncluttered.”

“Bare. It’s the way I like it.” I wished she would get to the point. What was she doing in my apartment so late at night?

“You don’t have photos of your family anywhere?”

“None.”

“What about Teiji’s photos? Don’t you like to put them on the walls?”

“I keep them in a drawer. A couple I use as bookmarks or whatever. I write shopping lists on the backs of some, but I don’t
throw them away afterward.”

“Why do you scribble on the back of a perfectly nice photograph? I’ll buy you a notebook if you’re short of paper.”

“No, no. Thanks. I like things around me to be useful. Otherwise, why would I keep them?”

It was not a truthful answer, but Lily wouldn’t have understood the truth. I kept Teiji’s pictures in a drawer that I opened
every night and every morning. Seeing myself through his eyes was the best way to see him when he wasn’t with me. I made notes
on the backs of his photographs because sometimes I didn’t feel like writing on anything that wasn’t his.

I sat on the floor, waited for Lily to explain herself. She said nothing, walked to the window and stuck her head out.

“Noisy with the windows open.”

“Yes, but it’s too hot otherwise.”

“How do you manage without air conditioning?”

“I sweat a lot.”

She sat on a cushion, curled her legs beside her, leaned against the wall.

“I feel strange.”

“Has something happened?”

“Yes, well. Yes it has and no it hasn’t.”

“You mean?”

“I had a letter from Andy. He wants me to go back.”

“He’s got your address? I thought you’d kept it top secret.”

“No, he hasn’t got it. He sent a letter to my friend and she’s forwarded it to me. The thing is that she’s the one I stayed
with before I came out to Japan. She helped me get the job and everything. That means that he’s traced me to her at least.
The next step will be to find out I’m in Tokyo. There are people in the pubs near her house who could tell him that much.”

“Yes, but even if he discovers you’re here, how on earth would he find your tiny apartment in Tokyo?”

“I know you’re right but it just frightened me when I got the letter. I feel stupid panicking about it. The truth is, I was
just starting to feel good without him. I’m getting used to working here and living here. I’d almost forgotten all about England.
It was quite nice, actually. And now here he bloody is again.”

“Is he really that bad? What are you so frightened of? You’ve left the country—surely that’s evidence enough that you’ve left
him too.”

Lily said nothing. She shook her head.

“Is he violent?”

“Not with me. Only with men he thinks are talking to me too much, or looking at me. I mean, what a joke. Who’d be looking
at me?”

Anyone would rather look at Lily’s pretty face than at Lucy, but I didn’t want to point this out while she was feeling so
sorry for herself with such success.

“Even if he did get your address, would he seriously come all the way to Japan? It’s a long way to travel just to be dumped
by a woman who’s already left you.”

“If he’s got the money, he’ll come. That’s a big if, mind you.

“So tell him to get lost, get back on his plane.”

She laughed, picked at her cuticles. “You know what he did once? It’s embarrassing. He wanted to hire a private detective
to snoop on me but he couldn’t afford it. So instead he bought a cheap bugging device from some dodgy bloke in a pub and put
it in the lining of my handbag.”

“He spied on you?”

“Yes, but I spotted it straight away. He’d ripped the lining to put the thing in and then tried to sew it up again, but made
a right pig’s ear. I found it when I was hanging my bag in my locker at work. I didn’t know what it was for weeks, mind you,
and I didn’t like to ask. I just put it on the shelf in my locker and forgot about it. I suppose the only thing he picked
up was the door opening and closing and the sound of the key in the lock.”

“So how did you find out what it was?”

“I caught him going through my bag a couple of times. In the end it dawned on me what he was looking for. I showed it to someone
at work and they told me what it was. I chucked it away, not before toying with the idea of attaching it to an ambulance siren,
mind you, give the bugger something to listen to.”

I looked at her.

“I know what that look means. Why didn’t I leave him sooner?”

“Well, why?”

“Because I knew he’d follow me and then I’d have to deal with the fights and everything. It was just less hassle to stay with
him until I could get so far away he wouldn’t find me.

“Logical.”

“I know, I know. If I was you I’d have said get lost and he would’ve gone away for good. You can do that sort of thing. I
can’t. I really admire you but I’m not like you.” Her eyes glazed over for a second and then she blinked. “I’m so sorry to
barge in like this.”

“You’re not barging in. It’s fine. You can come around here any time.”

“Us Yorkshire women have got to stay together, eh?”

I thought she might cry so for once I went along with her. “Here’s a good Yorkshire way of solving your problem.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ll put the kettle on.”

Lily laughed and rubbed her eyes. “Thanks. I could murder a cuppa. Seriously though, if you’re expecting Teiji to come around
later, after work—”

Is it Lucy’s imagination or did Lily really ask about Teiji so often that night?

I made tea and carried it through. Lily couldn’t drink hers without at least two heaped teaspoons of sugar and had to dash
out to the convenience store to buy some. I never buy sugar. I eat sweet food once or twice a year, and that is plenty.

I blew gently on the hot surface of the tea between sips. Lily seemed calmer about Andy and accepted that she was safe in
Tokyo.

“As safe as anyone ever is, anywhere.” She gulped her tea like a child drinking milk.

“Absolutely. So there is no point in worrying.”

“Yes. Lucy?”

“What?”

“I know it’s stupid of me but I don’t want to sleep in my own apartment tonight. I know he won’t come, it’s just that I’m
all nervous now and I’ll never be able to sleep. Would it be OK if I stopped here?”

I didn’t mind at all. I had extra bedding. My apartment had attained a rare coziness that evening, with the cushions, the
tea, and shared confidences. I knew already that if Lily left I would be suddenly lonely and my apartment would be bare again.
I hadn’t seen Teiji for seven days. Busy at the restaurant. The previous couple of nights had been long and solitary. Stupid,
ugly Lucy had slept fitfully in her cold bed. Every time she woke during the night the feeling that she had somehow made Teiji
stop loving her came afresh and kicked her hard in the stomach.

We pulled the futons out of the wardrobe and laid them side by side. We turned our backs on one another and slept. I am sure
that without disturbances we would both have slept soundly until the morning, but that was not the case. In the middle of
the night there was a sharp jolt. The walls shook and one of the teacups slipped from the table and rolled across the floor.
I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and saw that Lily was already sitting under my desk. The street lamp outside shone through the window
and bathed her in a yellow light. She hugged her knees tightly against her chest. Her eyes were shut, screwed up like raisins.

“Lily. Are you all right?”

“I’m scared.”

“It’s not such a bad one.” I paused. “I think it’s stopped.”

The floor shuddered again.

“What’s that noise?”

I hadn’t been conscious of it until she mentioned it. Then I realized the sound had been there all along, since before I woke
up, somewhere in my sleep.

“The earthquake bird.”

“The what?”

As I listened for it the noise faded and I knew the room had stopped moving.

“I don’t know what it is. It’s always there in a quake. I thought it was a piece of old metal being knocked against something.
It sounds too far away to be anything moving in the gas station, though. Teiji thinks it’s a bird, some old night bird being
knocked off its perch by the jolt.”

“Sounded like a boot kicking an old tin can somewhere in the distance.”

“Who’d be kicking an old can outside my apartment every time there happens to be an earthquake?”

“Good point.”

“The thing is, every time I listen more closely to work it out, I get confused. It’s hard to judge in the middle of the night.
And as soon as I’m awake enough to concentrate, it’s stopped. If you and Teiji hadn’t heard it too, I’d think I was dreaming.”

What I didn’t tell Lily about the earthquake bird was that I’d noticed something else. It didn’t start at the same time as
the rocking. It started just before. Was that a dream? If so, it was always the same. How could the bird, or tin can, or boot,
know an earthquake was about to happen? I pondered on this many times. I could have been wrong of course. Nothing is certain
in the middle of the night. But if I was right, was it a warning or a symptom? If it was a warning, of what use was it just
a few seconds before the event, with no time to run or hide?