“How’s Cabbage?”
“He’s doing fine.”
“But what are you going to do about him? Who’ll take care of him when you die?”
“I’m thinking about it. I’ll find someone.”
“Well, let me know if you can’t find anyone.”
“Thanks.”
At the foot of the steep hill we were making our way down I could see the movie theater’s sign all lit up. Years had gone by since I last saw the place and now it seemed so small. I first saw it as a student and it seemed big, and colorful. It was the same with the clock tower in the square. The neighborhood remained for the most part unchanged. The real-estate office, restaurants, the prep school, and the flower shop. The only difference was that the supermarket had been done up. But now the town I used to know felt like a miniature model, as if it had shrunk in size. Or was it that the way I saw things had become bigger?
“You know, there was something I wanted to ask you…” I trailed off.
“What?”
“Why do you think we broke up?”
“What made you want to know all of a sudden?”
“I guess there must have been some specific reason, but I can’t seem to remember now.”
Actually, I had been planning to ask her about this the whole time. About why we broke up. Maybe we just got bored, or our feelings got worn out, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember what it was exactly that finally drove us apart.
“So do you remember?”
For a while she didn’t respond, and then, turning to face me suddenly, fired off a series of questions.
“OK, what’s my favorite food?”
What a random question. The seconds ticked by.
“Ummmm, let me think. Is it deep-fried shrimp?”
“Wrong! It’s corn tempura!”
Hey, but I was close. They’re both fried foods. But wait a minute, what was she getting at with all this?
“OK then, what’s my favorite animal?”
“What? Ummm, let’s see now…”
“Japanese monkey.”
Right, right…
“Then what’s my favorite drink?”
What was it? I had no memory of it at all.
“Sorry… I give up.”
“Cocoa. What I was drinking back there at the cafe. You’ve forgotten already?”
Right. Now I remembered. She loved corn tempura and always ordered it when corn was in season. She used to say it was her favorite food in the whole wide world. And when we went to the zoo she’d never stray far from the monkey enclosure. And she’d drink hot cocoa all the time, even in summer.
It’s not as if I’d forgotten completely. I just couldn’t remember at that precise moment. I suppose after we broke up I had just shut away all my memories of her.
Somewhere I heard that people forget in order to build memories. You have to forget in order to move on. But on the other hand, I’d started to think… Now I was staring death in the face, I’d found myself remembering lots of trivial things.
“I guess people forget. It’s more or less what I expected. It’s the same with us breaking up. It’s just one of those things. It’s not worth trying to remember all the details.”
“Was that it… really?”
“Well, if you really want to know, I’d say that that trip we took before graduation was the beginning of the end.”
“You mean… Buenos Aires? Wow, that takes me back.”
All of the dates we went on took place right in the confines of the small town—we never went further afield. We just did laps around town, as if we were playing an endless game of Monopoly. And yet we were never bored.
We’d meet at the library after class and go to a movie. And then we’d go to our usual cafe and talk. Later we’d go to her place and have sex. Every once in a while she’d pack lunch for us and we’d take the cable car to the spot with the best view in town and have a picnic. It wasn’t much, but we were happy. It was all we needed.
Thinking about it now it’s kind of hard to believe, but I suppose the size of this town was just right for us then.
We went out for over three years, and we only went abroad once. Argentina… Buenos Aires. It was both our first and last trip together.
At the time, we were both crazy about a film by a Hong Kong director, set in Buenos Aires.
So for our last long holiday as students we decided to go there.
We booked a flight on a cheap American airline with a connection part way through. We were permanently cold and the food was awful. After twenty-six hours of travel we finally arrived in Buenos Aires.
From Ezeiza International Airport we took a seedy cab to El Centro. We checked into the hotel and headed straight to our room, to bed, but we couldn’t sleep. It didn’t matter how tired we were, our inner clocks were still on Japan time. We were on the other side of the world, as well as in a different hemisphere.
So we decided to go out and explore the city.
The beautiful sound of someone playing the bandoneón echoed through the streets and dancers did the tango on the cobblestones. The sky hung low in Buenos Aires as we took in the sights. We headed for the famous old Recoleta Cemetery and wandered around its labyrinthine passages, eventually finding the grave of Eva Peron. Later we ate lunch in a cafe while listening to tango melodies played by an elderly white-haired guitarist.
Later in the day we boarded a bus for La Boca, the old working-class district everyone talks about with its colorful houses, street musicians, and other attractions. The journey took half an hour as the bus wound its way through the series of narrow streets. Then the colors of the neighborhood came into view—the wooden houses painted sky blue and mustard yellow, emerald green and salmon pink. As we strolled around, the colors of the houses glowed in the setting sun, as if we were looking at dolls’ houses. When night fell, we went to watch a tango show at La Ventana in San Telmo—the heat of the dance took us to another world.
We spent a couple of days strolling through the city, slightly drunk on the passion that hung in the air. Then we met Tom, who was staying at the same cheap hotel as us.
He called himself Tom, but he was actually Japanese. He was a young man of twenty-nine and had quit his job at a media company to travel around the world. In the evenings, we’d go along with him to the local supermarket, to buy wine, meat, and cheese, which we took back to the hotel and ate in the dining room. Night after night we talked until late as we ate and sipped our wine.
Tom told us stories from his travels. He told us about the sacred cows in India, little boy Buddhist monks of Tibet, the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, and the white nights of Helsinki. He told us of seeing the ocean stretch on endlessly in Lisbon.
Tom didn’t hold back on the Argentine red wine and was soon stinking drunk, but he could still go on talking.
“There are so many cruel things in the world, but there are also just as many beautiful things.”
For us, after life in a small town doing the same thing day after day, it was all so new and fascinating… it was impossible to picture the things he described. But even so, Tom had no trouble relating to us, sometimes laughing, sometimes with tears in his eyes. There we were, the three of us on the other side of the world, talking on and on.
Then finally it was almost time for us to return to Japan, but Tom had suddenly disappeared. He hadn’t turned up at the hotel after heading out for a day of sightseeing, as usual. We drank wine as we always did and waited for him, but he never came.
The next day we found out that Tom was dead. He had taken a trip to the border between Argentina and Chile to see a historical site with a statue of Christ, and the bus he was on drove off a cliff.
It was like a dream. It didn’t feel real. I could still see Tom coming into the dining room with a bottle of wine in one hand saying, “C’mon, time for a drink,” but now Tom wasn’t coming back. We spent the day feeling stunned.