The Elephant Vanishes Part 19

"Yeah."

"What makes you think I'd be angry?"

"I don't know," she said in a shrinking voice.

Two tears spilled from her eyes and fell audibly onto her bag.

What was I to do? I just sat there, not saying a word. Trains pulled in, discharged pa.s.sengers, and pulled out. People disappeared down the stairs, and it was quiet again.

"Please. Just leave me alone." She smiled, parting her bangs to the side. "At first, I thought it was a mistake, too. So I thought, Why not just go on riding the opposite way? But by the time I pa.s.sed Tokyo Station, I thought otherwise. Everything was wrong. I don't ever want to be in a position like that again."

I wanted to say something, but the words wouldn't come. Wind blew stray pieces of newspaper to the far end of the platform.

"It's okay." She smiled weakly. "This was never any place I was meant to be. This isn't a place for me."

This place j.a.pan? This lump of stone spinning around in the blackness of s.p.a.ce? Silently I took her hand and placed it on my lap, resting my hand lightly on hers. Her palm was wet.

I forced words out: "There are some things about myself I can't explain to anyone. There are some things I don't understand at all. I can't tell what I think about things or what I'm after. I don't know what my strengths are or what I'm supposed to do about them. But if I start thinking about these things in too much detail, the whole thing gets scary. And if I get scared, I can only think about myself. I become really self-centered, and without meaning to, I hurt people. So I'm not such a wonderful human being."

I didn't know what else to say. And she said nothing. She seemed to wait for me to continue. She kept staring at the toe of her shoes. Far away, there was an ambulance siren. A station attendant was sweeping the platform. He didn't even look at us. It was getting late, so the trains were few.

"I enjoyed myself with you," I said. "It's true, really. I don't know how to put this, but you strike me as a real real person. I don't know why. Just being with you and talking, you know." person. I don't know why. Just being with you and talking, you know."

She looked up and stared at me.

"I didn't put you on the wrong train on purpose," I said. "I just wasn't thinking."

She nodded.

"I'll call you tomorrow," I said. "We can go somewhere and talk."

She wiped away the traces of her tears and slipped her hands in her pockets. "Thank you. I'm sorry for everything."

"You shouldn't apologize. It was my mistake."

We parted. I stayed on the bench and smoked my last cigarette, then threw the empty pack in the trash. It was close to midnight.

Nine hours later, I realized my second error of the evening. A fatal miss. I'm so stupid. Together with the cigarette pack, I'd thrown away the disco matches with her phone number on them. I checked everywhere. I went to the warehouse, but they didn't have her number. I tried the telephone directory. I even tried the student union at her school. No luck.

I never saw her again, my second Chinese.

NOW THE STORY of my third Chinese. of my third Chinese.

An acquaintance from high school, whom I mentioned earlier. A friend of a friend, whom I'd spoken to maybe a few times.

This happened when I'd just turned twenty-eight. Six years after I got married. Six years during which time I'd laid three cats to rest. Burned how many aspirations, bundled up how much suffering in thick sweaters, and buried them in the ground. All in this fathomlessly huge city Tokyo.

It was a chilly December afternoon. There was no wind; the air was so cold that what little light filtered through the clouds did nothing to clear away the gray of the city. I was heading home from the bank and stepped into a gla.s.s-fronted cafe on Aoyama Boulevard for a cup of coffee. I was flipping through the novel I'd just bought, looking up now and then, watching the pa.s.sing cars.

Then I noticed the guy standing in front of me. He was addressing me by name.

"That is you, isn't it?" he was saying.

I was taken aback. I answered in the affirmative, but I couldn't place the guy. He seemed to be about my age, and wore a well-tailored navy blazer and a suitably colored rep tie. Something about the guy made him seem a little worn down. His clothes weren't old, and he didn't look exhausted. Nothing like that. It had more to do with his face. Which, although presentable, gave me the feeling that his every expression had been thrown together on the spur of the moment. Like mismatched dishes set out in make-do fas.h.i.+on on a party table.

"Mind if I sit down?" he said, taking the seat opposite me. He fished a pack of cigarettes and a gold lighter from his pocket. He didn't light up, though; he merely put them on the table. "Well, remember me?"

"Afraid not," I confessed. "I'm sorry, I'm terrible about these things. I'm terrible with people's faces."

"Or maybe you'd just rather forget the past. Subliminally, that is."

"Maybe so," I said. What if I did?

The waitress brought over a gla.s.s of water for him, and he ordered an American coffee. Water it down, please, he told her.

"I got a bad stomach. I really ought to quit smoking, too," he said, fiddling with his cigarettes. He had that look that people with stomach troubles get when they talk about their stomach. "Anyway, like I was saying myself, for the same reason as you, I remember absolutely every last detail about the old days. It's weird, I tell you. Because believe me, some things I'd like to forget. But the more I try to wipe them away, the more they pop into my mind. You know what it's like when you're trying to fall asleep and it only makes you more wide awake? It's the same thing. I can't figure it out. I remember things I couldn't possibly have known. Sometimes it worries me, remembering the past in so much detail-how am I supposed to have room for what's to come? My memory's so sharp, it's a nuisance."

I set my book facedown on the table and sipped my coffee.

"Everything is vivid. The weather that day, the temperature, the smells. Just like now. It gets confusing, like where am I? Makes me wonder if things are only memories. Ever get that feeling?"

I shook my head absently.

"I remember you very well. I was walking by and saw you through the gla.s.s and I knew you right away. Did I bother you coming in here like this?"

"No," I said. "Still, you have to forgive me. I really don't remember you."

"Nothing to forgive. I'm the one who barged in on you. If the time comes to remember, you'll remember. That's how it goes. Memory works in different ways for everybody. Different capacities, different directions, too. Sometimes memory helps you think, sometimes it impedes. Doesn't mean it's good or bad. Probably means it's no big deal."

"Do you suppose you could tell me your name? It's simply not coming to me, and if I don't remember it's going to drive me crazy," I said.

"What's a name, really?" he answered. "So if it comes, okay; if it doesn't, that's okay, too. Either way, no big deal, like I said. But if not remembering my name bugs you that much, pretend we've just met for the first time. No mental block that way."

His coffee arrived and he drank it slowly. I couldn't get a handle at all on anything he was saying.

"A lot of water has gone under the bridge. That phrase was in our high-school English textbook. Remember?"

High school? Did I know this guy in high school?

"I'm sure that's how it went. The other day, I was standing on a bridge looking down, and suddenly that English phrase popped into my head. Clear as a bell. Like, sure, here's how time pa.s.ses."

He folded his arms and sat back deep in his chair, looking inscrutable. If that expression was meant to convey a particular meaning, it was lost on me. The guy's expression-forming genes must have worn through in places.

"Are you married?" he asked, out of nowhere.

I nodded.

"Kids?"

"No."

"I've got a son," he said. "He's four now and goes to nursery school."

End of conversation about children. We sat there, silent. I put a cigarette to my lips and he offered his lighter. A natural gesture. I generally don't like other people lighting my cigarettes or pouring my drinks, but this time I hardly paid any mind. In fact, it was a while before I even realized he'd lit my cigarette.

"What line of work you in?"

"Business," I said.

His mouth fell open and the word formed a second or two later. "Business?"

"Yeah. Nothing much to speak of." I let it slide.

He nodded and left it at that. It wasn't that I didn't want to talk about work. I just didn't feel like starting in on what promised to be another escapade. I was tired, and I didn't even know the guy's name.

"That surprises me. You in business. I wouldn't have figured you for a businessman."

I smiled.

"Used to be that all you did was read books," he went on, with a bit of mystery.

"Well, I still read a lot." I forced a laugh.

"Encyclopedias?"

"Encyclopedias?"

"Sure, you got an encyclopedia?"

"No." I shook my head, not comprehending.

"You don't read encyclopedias?"

"Maybe if there's one around," I said. Of course, in the place I was living there wouldn't be any room to have one around.

"Actually, I sell encyclopedias," he said.

Oh, boy, an encyclopedia salesman. Half my curiosity about the guy immediately drained away. I took a sip of my now-lukewarm coffee and quietly set the cup back on its saucer.

"You know, I wouldn't mind having a set," I said, "but unfortunately, I don't have the money. No money at all. I'm only just now beginning to pay off my loans."

"Whoa there!" he said, shaking his head. "I'm not trying to sell you any encyclopedia or anything. Me, I may be broke, but I'm not that hard up. And anyway, the truth is, I don't have to try to sell to j.a.panese. It's part of the deal I have."

"Don't have to sell to j.a.panese?"

"Right, I specialize in Chinese. I only sell encyclopedias to Chinese. I go through the Tokyo directory picking out Chinese names. I make a list, then go through the list one by one. I don't know who dreamed this scam up, but why not? Seems to work, saleswise. I ring the doorbell, I say, Ni hao Ni hao, I hand them my card. After that, I'm in."

Suddenly there was a click in my head. This guy was that Chinese boy I'd known in high school.

"Strange, huh, how someone ends up walking around selling encyclopedias to Chinese? I don't understand it," the guy said, seeming to distance himself from the whole thing. "Sure, I can remember each of the little circ.u.mstances leading up to it, but the big picture, you know, how it all comes together moving in this one direction, escapes me. I just looked up one day and here I was."

This guy and I had never been in the same cla.s.s, nor, as I said, had we been on such close personal terms. But as near as I could place him, he hadn't been your encyclopedia-salesman type, either. He seemed well bred, got better grades than I did. Girls liked him.

"Things happen, eh? It's a long, dark, dumb story. Nothing you'd want to hear," he said.

The line didn't seem to demand a response, so I let it drop.

"It's not all my doing," he picked up. "All sorts of things just piled on. But in the end, it's n.o.body's fault but mine."

I was thinking back to high school with this guy, but all I came up with was vague scenes scenes. I seemed to recall sitting around a table at someone's house, drinking beer and talking about music. Probably on a summer afternoon, but more like in a dream.

"Wonder what made me want to say h.e.l.lo?" he asked, half to me, twirling the lighter around on the table. "Guess I kind of bothered you. Sorry about that."

"No bother at all," I said. Honestly, it wasn't.

We both fell silent for a minute. Neither of us had anything to say. I finished my cigarette, he finished his coffee.

"Well, guess I'll be going," he said, pocketing his cigarettes and lighter. Then he slid back his chair a bit. "Can't be spending the whole day talking. Not when there's things to sell, eh?"

"You have a pamphlet?" I asked.

"A pamphlet?"

"About the encyclopedia."

"Oh, right," he mumbled. "Not on me. You want to see one?"

"Sure, just out of curiosity."

"I'll send you one. Give me your address."

I tore out a page of my Filofax, wrote down my address, and handed it to him. He looked it over, folded it in quarters, and slipped it into his business-card case.

"It's a good encyclopedia, you know. I'm not just saying that because I sell them. Really, it's well done. Lots of color photos. Very handy. Sometimes I'll thumb through the thing myself, and I never get bored."

"Someday, when my s.h.i.+p comes in, maybe I'll buy one."

"That'd be nice," he said, an election-poster smile returning to his face. "But by then, I'll probably have done my time with encyclopedias. I mean, there's only so many Chinese families to visit. Maybe I'll have moved on to insurance for Chinese. Or funeral plots. What's it really matter?"

I wanted to say something. I would never see this guy again in my life. I wanted to say something to him about the Chinese, but what? Nothing came. So we parted with your usual good-byes.

Even now, I still can't think of anything to say.

SSUPPOSING I FOUND myself chasing another fly ball and ran head-on into a basketball backboard, supposing I woke up once again lying under an arbor with a baseball glove under my head, what words of wisdom could this man of thirty-odd years bring himself to utter? Maybe something like: myself chasing another fly ball and ran head-on into a basketball backboard, supposing I woke up once again lying under an arbor with a baseball glove under my head, what words of wisdom could this man of thirty-odd years bring himself to utter? Maybe something like: This is no place for me This is no place for me.

This occurs to me while I'm riding the Yamanote Line. I'm standing by the door, holding on to my ticket so I won't lose it, gazing out the window at the buildings we pa.s.s. Our city, these streets, I don't know why it makes me so depressed. That old familiar gloom that befalls the city dweller, regular as due dates, cloudy as mental Jell-O. The dirty facades, the nameless crowds, the unremitting noise, the packed rush-hour trains, the gray skies, the billboards on every square centimeter of available s.p.a.ce, the hopes and resignation, irritation and excitement. And everywhere, infinite options, infinite possibilities. An infinity, and at the same time, zero. We try to scoop it all up in our hands, and what we get is a handful of zero. That's the city. That's when I remember what that Chinese girl said.

This was never any place I was meant to be.