The Earthquake Bird (7 page)

Those were the stories in my head. Who can say where I got them from? At first they were enough—he was the magical statue
I found in Shinjuku and he was perfect—but now I wanted more. There were many missing years. I wanted to see his photographs,
open up the boxes.

Of course, once you have had the idea, it is impossible to lose it again. I knew that I would see the pictures so I decided
to save myself hours or weeks of agonizing and do it immediately. About twenty minutes after Teiji had gone, I set off for
his apartment. He kept a spare key in a crack in the wall beside his front door. I fished it out and let myself in.

I went straight to the boxes. I was nervous. In some ways his room belonged to me—I knew every nook and cranny, every speck
and stain—but in other respects it was forbidden territory. Beneath the cardboard flaps were envelopes and folders full of
pictures, all in neat piles. The first box held the pictures of his childhood. I wasn’t so interested in those for the moment.
I closed the box and pushed it back against the wall. The contents of the other box were a chronicle of his life since arriving
in Tokyo. Toward the top were the pictures he’d taken of me. I imagined the bottom ones were his earlier treasures, his last
days at high school, first days in the restaurant. I dug for the middle layer. I didn’t want to know about his arrival here.
I wanted to know about the in-between Tokyo years, the ones before he met Lucy.

There were the usual pictures of water, of pavement scenes, of train stations and tunnels. Then I found what I suppose I had
been looking for. A picture of a young woman. She was looking at the camera through the window of a bus. She had a soft, round
face, deeply set eyes and hair cut into a bob which brushed her chin. She looked as if she could have been pretty but she
glowered at the camera through tired, angry eyes. Was this Teiji’s lover before he found me?

There were more pictures. I followed her backward through them until I found the first. I was excited by what I saw. She was
onstage in a play. The picture must have been taken from the back of the theater for she was just a small figure under the
lights. She was wearing a soldier’s uniform and had a gun over her shoulder. Her mouth was open in a silent shout. The stage
was small and she was the only actor. The walls of the theater were black. I wondered at Teiji’s being there. Had he gone
there because he knew her, or was he there because he wanted to see the play and then he happened to find her? He’d never
mentioned any interest in theater, but if he’d met her before, there should have been an earlier photograph. Prior to the
soldier, there was nothing, just a few shots of a man in the noodle shop smiling stiffly through damp, red eyes at the camera.

I followed her forward again. There were several more pictures taken in theaters. She was in different costumes but it was
hard to make out her face. There were other pictures: coffee shops, parks, a riverside, parties. As I went through them I
saw that there were fewer and fewer where she was an actress and more where she was at parties, sitting on worn tatami or
on a bed. Her face became fatter and paler through the pictures. Then there were only parties. She came to look sad and then
sadder. Her tight-fitting clothes were crumpled and stained. The last one I had a chance to see showed the woman lying on
her front on the pavement, head to one side. The corners of her mouth were raised. She might have been grimacing or smiling.
I couldn’t tell. I wondered what on earth she was doing. She must have been drunk.

“They’re private.”

Teiji’s voice was flat. He had entered the room without a noise—or I had been too engrossed to hear it—and stood behind me.

I had no answer. I was caught red-handed. The only thing I could say was sorry, but I really wasn’t sorry that I’d looked,
only that I’d been caught. I stood but couldn’t face Teiji.

“I know. I shouldn’t have looked.”

“We didn’t have any customers, so I got the evening off. I was going to call you.”

I shrugged. “Now you don’t need to.”

“No. I don’t.” He walked around in front of me, looked into my eyes.

I thought I’d blown it. He didn’t say anything for a few moments. Now that I’d seen this woman, the actress, he looked different
to me. His eyes seemed darker, his hair thicker, his bones more clearly defined. He had come into focus, somehow. I stared
back, waited for him to speak.

“Let’s stay in. Come on.” With one foot he pushed the open box to the corner of the room. He pulled me to the bed and sat
beside me. There was an expression of sadness on his face when he held my chin and looked at me. I think he felt bad for catching
me out. He was probably angry but he was also sorry for me. He watched me for minutes. I didn’t know what he was looking for,
but I was worried of what he might see.

I couldn’t get the scowling woman out of my head. I needed to ask.

“Who was she?”

“Sachi.”

“Where is she now?”

“I don’t know. She’s gone.”

“She just went all of a sudden?”

“We finished. She left. I don’t try to find her.” He sighed deeply. “Lucy, I found you and I don’t think of Sachi anymore.”

I didn’t speak. It was hard to believe he didn’t think of her anymore when I was sure I would never stop thinking of her.

“When something’s gone, it’s gone. You look for the next thing. I found you.”

We made love but I was unable to enjoy it. I felt guilty because I’d broken into Teiji’s apartment, guiltier still because
he was showing no anger. And mostly I couldn’t enjoy it because I was looking at Sachi’s unhappy face all the time.

The next morning was bright and sunny so the hike wouldn’t be canceled. Lucy was now glad. It would be good to see other people,
good to get away from Teiji and Sachi. I was still wary of Lily but that feeling was almost canceled by my desire to see Natsuko.
Smiling, always calm, sometimes bossy Natsuko.

Natsuko was my first friend in Tokyo. She was the second friend in Lucy’s life, after the long-faced, trombone-playing Lizzie.
We worked together when I first arrived. When Natsuko found a better job with another company, she worked as hard as she could
to ensure a job there for me. It took more than three years and we have both been there ever since. Natsuko is about my age
and is bilingual. She speaks English with an accent that is sometimes Australian and sometimes American because she traveled
so much as a child. Occasionally she sounds German and from time to time Irish. She has a round dimpled face and even when
she is not smiling her lips are set in the form of a smile. I have often wondered at it. She looks perpetually happy, in the
way that I look perpetually gloomy, for even when I smile, my mouth does not always move. It is an effort to draw my lips
into a smile to keep people happy, when in fact I am perfectly content inside.

We had our lunch together every day. Bentos of rice, fish, seaweed, cans of green tea. Sometimes we chatted about work, about
our weekends. Often we didn’t find any conversation to make, but we still sat together because that was good enough. Once
a month or so we went out into the mountains together and hiked for a day. On the way down we would stop at a hot spring,
strip off, and let our tired muscles tingle in steamy water.

I regarded Natsuko as a constant. She never asked me about my private life. Sometimes she told me of hers—a series of unsatisfactory
boyfriends, her desperation to move out of her parents’ house though she couldn’t afford to rent an apartment—and left a space
open for me to volunteer tidbits of my own life. I just didn’t. Not because I didn’t trust Natsuko or felt uncomfortable.
I loved everything she was. I didn’t want to spoil it by talking about myself.

Natsuko helped me when I joined the company and she was there beside me every day. She lent me pencils and dictionaries. She
taught me new kanji and Japanese slang. Now she is not so sure about Lucy. She probably wonders why I never talked about myself,
what I was hiding from her, and so she avoids me. I don’t mind being ignored. It can remove many obstacles and irritations
of daily life. But I can’t deny that I am a little disappointed in Natsuko.

However, in those days she was good to me. She helped me find my job, and she also found the string quartet, for which I will
always be grateful.

I arrived at Shinjuku. It was early morning but the station was already alive. People in suits boarded trains for work, though
it was a weekend. A few people in crushed, smoky work clothes headed home from the previous night’s fun looking tired and
shriveled. I passed a group of chattering high-school students who carried kendo swords in cases over their shoulders. I looked
for Lily, half hoping that she had overslept. But she was there, with Natsuko and a couple of other people. Lily had invited
Bob. Bob had brought his colleague, Richard. Natsuko was in the middle of the throng, busily introducing herself to the others,
beaming.

“Hi, Lucy. I’m so glad you invited all these people. It’s going to be so much fun.”

She sounded Australian today. She’d lived in Melbourne between the ages of six and ten. Any activity that was fun or energetic
brought back her Australian accent. At work she tended to sound American. I guessed it was because she went to university
and studied translation in New York.

“Hi, Luce,” said Bob. “So you’re going to lead the expedition into the mountains? Hope you’ve brought supplies in case we
get lost.”

“Don’t joke,” I said. “You don’t know me well enough. There’s more than a little chance that if I were in charge here we’d
all go over the edge of a precipice, or perish in a freak landslide. Disaster is always at my heels. No, Natsuko is our navigator
for the day and a very good one too. She knows all the best routes and the hidden tracks away from the crowds.”

“It’s a clear day so we should get some good views,” Natsuko said. “I can’t wait to get up there. I need the exercise too.
I’ve been drinking like a fish for the past month and I’m almost bursting out of my Lycra.”

She lifted her T-shirt a few inches to prove this and laughed. Richard and Bob immediately pulled their clothes around to
display their own ample midriffs. Amid the boasting and teasing a weedy voice piped up.

“Will we see Mount Fuji?”

I had forgotten Lily. I was surprised she had heard of Mount Fuji but I supposed that it only took a few weeks in Japan to
pick up certain facts.

“Yes, I hope so.” Natsuko showed her map to Lily. “See. There are a couple of viewing points on the trail. If it’s clear we’ll
see it at least twice. You ought to see Fuji, you know. It’ll be a kind of initiation for you. Does everyone have plenty of
water and something for lunch?”

She herded us to the train. The carriage was full of other hikers heading out in the same direction. Most were middle-aged
or elderly. When Natsuko and I went to the mountains, we rarely saw other people under the age of forty. That morning was
typical. There were all-female groups and a few mixed parties, none made up only of men. They had expensive-looking walking
gear—Gore-Tex shoes, mountain sticks, shiny rucksacks, and hiking hats. The women wore round hats with floppy brims. The men
had peaked caps.

Our group was less professionally attired. We sported a mixture of jeans and leggings, old sneakers, baggy T-shirts, and no
hats, though Richard wore a red bandanna. I was pleased Bob and Richard had come. I was in a solitary mood and it is much
easier to be alone in a large group than in a threesome. Natsuko was in her element as mother hen, showing Lily the map and
explaining where we were going.

The mountains in Yamanashi were soft and green, with air that smelled of soil, rain, and pine trees. I had been breathing
the Tokyo air that smelled of people and traffic for months. When we arrived at the base of our mountain, I felt lightheaded.

“I love the countryside,” Lily said, coming to stand beside me. “Doesn’t it make you feel like a kid again? We used to go
walking, Andy and me, in the Yorkshire Moors and on the Dales. It’s beautiful.”

I withheld a scream. Why did she have to keep going on about that damned place? How could I concentrate on being in Yamanashi
if she was going to dredge up various parts of Yorkshire with every comment? I gave her remark a perfunctory nod and went
to find Bob. We walked together until the mountain became steep. There were old farmhouses here and there with gardens full
of bright flowers and thick green trees.

“I think,” Bob said, “Lily’s settling in. Thanks to you.”

“I really haven’t done anything. Finding the apartment was easy.”

“She’s more confident now. And learning Japanese too. She said you started her off.”

“Well, she needed to be able to say something at least. God knows, she talks enough in English.”

Bob smiled. “You’re a good Japanese teacher. You certainly helped me with a tricky situation at the dentist’s. How are your
teeth?”

“Just fine. Yours?”

“A bit more treatment to go. Soon be over, though. These trees are beautiful.”

We had left the roads and houses and were now on a dirt path surrounded by tall pines. They stood silent and still, like breathing
statues. We began to climb. A stream ran along beside us for much of the way and a couple of times we had to cross it. Bob
and I helped each other over, then waited for the others. As the climbing became tougher, the chattering declined to occasional
comments, then silence apart from the sound of breath and feet. That is my favorite part of a hike, when all the words and
sentences have been talked out of you and people slip, one by one, into their own thoughts and dreams.

After a couple of hours we arrived at a low peak. We could see for miles around. Distant mountains and valleys, small villages
and paddy fields. Natsuko consulted her book.

“We should be able to see Mount Fuji in that direction.” She pointed to a range of higher mountains, covered with blue sky.
We clustered around but could see no sign of Fuji.

“It’s big enough,” Richard said. “If it was there, we’d see it. The book must be wrong.”