“What kind of place is this?”
“It seems like some sort of middle place.”
“Middle place?”
“Perhaps like a borderline.”
A borderline between what? Did Sensei really come to a place like this all the time? I gulped down another glassful of saké, with no idea how many I’d had, and looked out at the tidal flat. The figures there were hazy and blurred.
“Our dog,” Sensei began, setting down his empty glass on the rocks. The glass suddenly disappeared before my eyes.
We had a dog. It must have been when my son was still small. A Shiba Inu. I love Shibas. My wife liked mutts. She once brought home a bizarre-looking dog from somewhere—it looked like a cross between a dachshund and a bulldog—and that dog lived a very long time. My wife loved that dog. But we had the Shiba before that one. The Shiba ate something he shouldn’t have, then he was ill for a short time, and in the end he died. My son was devastated. I was sad too. But my wife didn’t shed a single tear. Rather, she seemed almost resentful. Resentful at our weepy son and at me.
After we buried the Shiba in our garden, suddenly my wife said to our son, “It’s all right, he’ll be reincarnated.”
She went on, “Chiro will soon be reincarnated.”
“But what will he be reincarnated as?” our son must have asked, his eyes swollen from crying.
“He’ll be reincarnated as me.”
“What?” our son said, eyes agog. I too was stunned. What could this woman possibly mean? There was no rhyme or reason to it, nor was it any consolation.
“Mom, don’t say such weird things,” our son said, a note of anger in his voice.
“It’s not weird,” Sumiyo sniffed, and hurried inside the house. A few days passed without any incident but, I think it was less than a week later, we were at the dinner table when suddenly Sumiyo started barking.
“Arf” was the sound she made. Chiro had a high-pitched bark. She sounded exactly like him. Perhaps because she had studied magic tricks, she may have been cleverer than most people at mimicry, but nevertheless, she sounded exactly like him.
“Quit your stupid joke,” I said, but Sumiyo paid no attention. For the rest of the meal, she continued to bark. Arf, arf, arf. Both our son and I lost our appetites and quickly got up from the table.
The next day Sumiyo was back to her usual self, but our son was infuriated. Mom, say you’re sorry, he demanded persistently. Sumiyo was completely indifferent.
But he’s been reincarnated. Chiro’s inside me now. The casual way in which she said it only intensified his pique. Ultimately, neither one of them would concede to the other. This was the source of the strained relationship between them, and after our son graduated from high school, he decided to go off to a faraway university, and he stayed there and found a job. He rarely visited, even after his own child was born.
I would ask Sumiyo, Don’t you love your grandchild? Don’t you have any desire to see him?
“Not particularly,” she would say.
Then, Sumiyo disappeared.
“SO, THEN, WHERE are we?” I asked, for the umpteenth time. And still, Sensei did not reply.
Perhaps Sumiyo couldn’t bear misfortune. Perhaps she couldn’t stand feeling unhappy.
“Sensei,” I called out. “You cared deeply for Sumiyo, didn’t you?”
Sensei made a harrumphing sound and glared at me. “Whether I cared for her or not, she was a selfish woman.”
“Was she?”
“Selfish, headstrong, and temperamental.”
“They all mean the same thing.”
“Yes, they do.”
The tidal flat was now completely obscured by haze. Where we were, the place where Sensei and I stood, to-go glasses of saké in hand, appeared to be nothing but air, all around us.
“Where are we?”
“This place is, well, here.”
Once in a while, children’s voices would rise up from below. The voices were sluggish and distant.
“We were young, Sumiyo and I.”
“You’re still young.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Sensei, I’ve had enough of these glasses of saké.”
“Shall we go down there and dig for littleneck clams?”
“We can’t eat them raw.”
“We could build a fire and roast them.”
“Roast them?”
“You’re right, it’s too much trouble.”
Something made a rustling sound. It was the camphor tree murmuring outside my window. This was a pleasant time of year. It rained often, but the rain-slicked leaves on the camphor tree gleamed lustrously. Sensei smoked his cigarette somewhat distractedly.
This place is a borderline. Sensei seemed to have moved his lips, but in fact, I couldn’t tell if he had spoken or not.
“How long have you been coming here?” I asked, and Sensei smiled.
“Perhaps since around when I was your age. Somehow I just had to urge to come here.”
Sensei, let’s go back to Satoru’s place. I don’t want to stay in this strange place anymore. Let’s hurry back, I called out to Sensei. Let’s go back.
But how do we get out of this place? Sensei replied.
A flurry of voices rose up from the tidal flat. The camphor tree outside the window made a rustling murmur. Sensei and I stood there in a daze, to-go glasses of saké in our hands. The leaves of the camphor tree outside my window murmured, Come here.
The Cricket
LATELY, FOR A while now, I haven’t seen Sensei.
And it’s not because we ended up in that strange place together—it’s because I’m avoiding him.
I don’t go anywhere near Satoru’s place. I don’t take evening walks on my days off either. Instead of wandering around the old market in the shopping district, I hurriedly do my shopping at the big supermarket by the station. I don’t go to the used bookstore or the two bookshops in the neighborhood. I figure if I can manage not to do these things, than maybe I won’t run into Sensei. Should be easy.
Easy enough that I could probably manage not to see Sensei for the rest of my life. And if I never saw him again, then maybe I could move on.
“It grows because you plant it.” This was a phrase often repeated by my great-aunt when she was alive. As old as she was, my great-aunt was still more enlightened than my own mother. After her husband, my great-uncle, passed away, she had numerous “boyfriends” who doted on her as she dashed around to dinners and card games and croquet.
“That’s how love is,” she used to say. “If the love is true, then treat it the same way you would a plant—fertilize it, protect it from the elements—you must do absolutely everything you can. But if it isn’t true, then it’s best to just let it wither on the vine.”
My great-aunt was fond of wordplay and puns.
If I followed her theory, and didn’t see Sensei for a long time, then maybe my feelings for him would just wither away.
Which was why I’ve been avoiding him lately.
If I left my apartment and walked for a while alongside the big main road, then followed a street that led into a residential area before reaching the riverside, if I walked about one hundred meters further, there on the corner was Sensei’s house.
Sensei’s house was not on the riverfront; it was set back about three houses from the water. Up until about thirty years ago, whenever a big typhoon came through, the easily overflowing river would flood the neighborhood up to the houses’ floorboards. During the era of rapid economic growth, there were large-scale river improvements that enclosed the riverbank in concrete. The wall was dug quite deep, which also widened the river.
It used to be a swiftly flowing river. The water moved so fast you could barely tell if it was transparent or muddy. There must have been something inviting about the current, because occasionally people would throw themselves into it. Most of the time, though, instead of drowning they would be carried downstream and then rescued, to their dismay, or so I heard.