Sasaki had had thinning black hair, always combed back over his scalp, and a neat little moustache under his nose. He carried around the sweet smell of hair oil or eau de cologne, mingled with the clean smell of soap. He often bought Takeru a soda at the vending machine by the office entrance. He was soft-spoken and polite.
He said he had a grandson about Takeru’s age and that he often bought him soda too. He had to be secretive about it, though, he said, as his daughter would get mad if she found out.
“You’re a grandad?” asked Takeru, surprised. It seemed strange. Sasaki certainly wasn’t young, but he didn’t look old enough to have a grandchild.
“Certainly am,” he said. “Will your mom get annoyed if she sees me buying you soda?”
“I think it’ll be okay,” said Takeru.
Because there’s probably no chance of her seeing—is that what Takeru meant?
“Come to think of it, I haven’t seen your mom recently. Is she busy?”
Takeru nodded.
“She’s a beautiful lady,” said Sasaki.
Takeru wondered if Sasaki had ever really seen her. Perhaps he was thinking of someone else.
“She’s kind!” Takeru said.
What made him say that? He sounded angry, though Sasaki didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he just pretended not to notice.
“Very, very kind,” said Takeru, as though telling himself.
“Is she now?” said Sasaki. “I wonder how old she is. I’d guess about the same age as my daughter…”
Takeru thought for a moment.
“I think she’s about thirty,” he said vaguely.
“She must have gotten married very young. My daughter married when she was nineteen. She’d just had a baby.”
“Can people have babies before they’re married?” asked Takeru.
“Babies are born whether their parents are married or not,” Sasaki replied, laughing.
Takeru laughed too, to be polite, not knowing what was funny.
Sasaki carried on, in a sadder voice.
“Once she was married she had another baby very quickly, and then right after that she got divorced.”
Takeru wanted to know more about Sasaki’s grandchildren.
“Do the children live with their mother?” he asked.
“They all live in my house,” he said.
Sasaki took a cell phone from his pocket and showed Takeru the photo on the screen—his daughter and two grandchildren. His daughter was plump, with dyed-brown hair and narrow eyes. She didn’t look much like Sasaki. The boys were chubby too. Their heads were shaved, and they wore matching Pokemon T-shirts (Takeru immediately recognized the monster as Raikou). They looked a lot like their mother.
Sasaki put the cell phone back in his pocket and glanced at the vending machine.
“Does your kid brother want soda too?”
“He’s not my kid brother…”
No matter how many times Takeru told him otherwise, Sasaki kept thinking Takeru was the elder brother. It’s true that Takeru was slightly taller, and when the two brothers walked together it was Takeru who kept looking back anxiously. It was Takeru who took out the soda cans when they thumped down into the dispensing bin of a vending machine, and it was his brother who waited to be given one. It wasn’t just soda that Sasaki bought them. He often got sweets or ice cream for them at the convenience store or supermarket. It was Takeru, of course, who took charge of the plastic bag, and who took something out of it to give to his brother. It was Takeru who, placing the treat in his brother’s hand, made him hold it against his chest to keep it from falling. But his brother was the older one and Takeru the younger one.
After a while Sasaki didn’t seem to be around anymore. Takeru had often heard him say he was old and wanted to stop working. He must have gone back up north to Tohoku—Aomori, maybe, or Iwate—and be living happily with his daughter and grandsons.
With Sasaki went Sasaki’s hands—the hands that passed drinks and snacks to Takeru—small strong hands with thick fingers formed by years of hard manual labor. And just about the time those hands disappeared, that black arm stretched out from the building next door, that big long-fingered hand.
The strong-featured dark face at the window smiled.
“Konnichi-wa,” its owner said, Hello.
He continued speaking for a bit, but the only word Takeru understood was Konnichi-wa.
A furrow eventually appeared between the man’s eyebrows. He pointed to himself and very slowly said: “Joel.”
Takeru, probably staring in amazement, pointed to himself and said: “Takeru.”
Joel disappeared for a few moments. Then, coming back, he leaned out of the window and stretched his hand toward Takeru. It was like a big black flower. The long fingers reached close to Takeru’s face. They held a plastic bag, and inside the bag were rolls of bread.
At first Takeru didn’t understand.
“Tabete,” said Joel, Eat. He swung the bag gently. It rustled.
Takeru clasped the bag with both hands.
“Arigato,” he said quietly.
Joel’s long-lashed eyes gleamed happily.
To make sure he was understood, Takeru, very shyly, almost inaudibly, spoke again:
“Thank you,” he said in English.
Joel’s smile broadened.
“Chotto matte!” he said, Wait a second. He disappeared again.
“Nonde,” he said, coming back, Drink. He held out a two-liter bottle of Fanta Orange.
His long fingers reached almost all the way around the bottle.
“Thank you!” said Takeru, hugging it to his chest. He might have been holding a baby.
Joel appeared at the window often after that, and passed Takeru bread, rice balls, and drinks. Takeru didn’t really know how to react, so he always accepted them in silence. Well, not exactly silence: he never forgot to say thank you or arigato. He and his brother savored every mouthful. No. They gobbled it all down like animals.
Takeru had no idea why the African man next door would be so kind to them. Perhaps all African people were like that. There’d been a boy named Daisuke Jones in sixth grade at Takeru’s school in Momono. He had coffee-colored skin and curly hair, and everyone called him DJ. Takeru and DJ were in a group of kids who walked to school together. DJ was always very kind to the younger children. He sometimes gave Takeru and the others rides on his shoulders. He was 180 centimeters tall and it felt amazingly high up there. When the children called him the Tokyo Sky Tree, which was then being built, he said no, he was the Sears Tower. He told them proudly that his daddy came from the city where President Obama used to work.
But Joel wasn’t African. He had said so himself. No, Takeru didn’t understand what Joel said. But one day Joel had shown him a map through the window. He unfolded it from a travel guide he’d gotten a hold of somewhere. The map showed a lot of islands in the ocean. In the area that Joel pointed to were names like “Haiti” and “Jamaica,” and, in bigger letters, “Gulf of Mexico” and “Caribbean Sea.” The coast of Africa was far away on the right-hand side of the map, all the way across the Atlantic.
The name Haiti reminded Takeru of Heidi, the little girl from the Swiss Alps. He also thought of Haiji, a classmate of his in first and second grades at Momono Elementary. Their names may have been similar, but Haiji was a big boy with a sharp, tanned face. He looked nothing like apple-cheeked Heidi, with her bright-colored clothes. They both had high-pitched voices, though, and laughed a lot. They both ran fast.