The tremor stopped. A child’s questioning voice floated from the house. Mrs. Fujimoro took a deep breath, stepped away from me, and bowed. She picked up her broom. Her expression, so recently unmasked, was already distant again. I stood alone on the worn cobblestones.
“You turned off your gas?” she asked.
“Oh, yes!” I assured her. “Yes, I turned off the gas!” We had this exchange often; it was one of my few phrases of perfect Japanese.
Yoshi was in the doorway by the time I turned, his hair tousled and an old T-shirt pulled on over his running shorts. He had a kind face, and he gave a slight bow to Mrs. Fujimoro, who bowed in turn and spoke to him in rapid Japanese. Her husband had been a schoolmate of Yoshi’s father, and we rented the house from them. On the rare occasions when Yoshi’s parents visited from London—his mother is British—they stayed in another flat the Fujimoros owned around the corner.
“What were you talking about?” I asked when Yoshi finally bowed again to Mrs. Fujimoro and stepped back inside. He’d grown up bilingual and moved with fluid ease between languages, something I both admired and envied.
“Oh, she was telling me about the Great Kanto Earthquake in the twenties. Some of her family died in it, and she thinks that’s why she gets so afraid, even in the little tremors. She’s terrified of fires. And she’s sorry if she startled you by taking your hand.”
“It’s all right,” I said, following Yoshi to the kitchen, picking up my empty cup on the way. “The earthquakes scare me, too. I don’t know how you can be so calm.”
“Well, they either stop or they don’t. There’s not much you can do, is there? Besides, look,” he added, gesturing to the paper, which of course I couldn’t read. “Front page. It says an island is forming underwater, and then everything will improve. This is just a release of pressure.”
“Great. Very reassuring.” I watched him add water to the tea, his movements easy, practiced. “Yoshi, my mother was in an accident,” I said.
He looked up.
“What happened? Is she okay?”
“A car accident. Not serious, I don’t think. Or serious, but she’s fine anyway. It depends on whose story you read.”
“Ah. That’s really too bad. You’ll go see her?”
I didn’t answer immediately. Did he want me to go? Would that be a relief? “I don’t think so,” I said, finally. “She says she’s okay. Besides, I need to find a job.”
Yoshi fixed me with the kind expression that had once drawn me to him and now often made me feel so claustrophobic: as if he understood me, inside out.
“Next week, next month, you can still look for jobs.”
I glanced out the kitchen window at the wall of the house next door.
“No, Yoshi. I really don’t want to put it off. All this free time is making me a little crazy, I think.”
“Well,” Yoshi said cheerfully, sitting at the table. “I can’t argue with that.”
“I’ve looked hard,” I told him tersely. “You have no idea.”
Yoshi was peeling a mandarin orange in a skillful way that left the skin almost intact, like an empty lantern, and he didn’t look up.
“Well, what about that consultancy—the one on the Chinese dam project on the Mekong? Did you follow through on that?”
“Not yet. It’s on my list.”
“Your list—Lucy, how long can it be?”
Now I took a deep breath before I answered. We’d been looking forward to this hike in the mountains for weeks, and I didn’t want to argue. “I’ve been researching that firm,” I said, finally, trying to remember that just hours ago we’d been dancing in this same room, the air around us dark and fragrant.
Yoshi offered me a segment of his orange. These little oranges, mikans, grew on the trees in the nearby hills and looked like bright ornaments when they ripened. We’d seen them when we visited last fall, back when Yoshi had just been offered this job and everything still seemed full of possibilities.
“Lucy, why not take a break and go see your mother? I could meet you there, too, after this business trip to Jakarta. I’d like to do that. I’d like to meet her.”
“But it’s such a long way.”
“Not unless you’re planning to walk.”
I laughed, but Yoshi was serious. His eyes, the color of onyx, as dark as the bottom of a lake, were fixed on me. I caught my breath, remembering the night before, how he’d held my gaze without blinking while his fingers moved so lightly across my skin. Yoshi traveled often for his job—an engineer, he designed bridges for a company that had branches in several countries—and this trip had seemed like just one more absence to add to all the others. How ironic if now his job became a way for us to reconnect.
“Don’t you ever want me to meet her?” he pressed.
“It’s not that,” I said, and it really wasn’t. I picked up the empty orange skin, light in my palm. “It’s just the timing. Besides, my mother’s condition isn’t serious. It’s not exactly an emergency situation.”
Yoshi shrugged, taking another orange from the cobalt bowl. “Sometimes loneliness is an emergency situation, Lucy.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that lately you seem like a very sad and lonely person, that’s all.”
I looked away, blinking in surprise as my eyes, inexplicably, filled with tears.
“Hey.” He touched my hand; his fingertips were sticky. “Look, Lucy, I’m sorry, okay? Let’s not worry about this. Let’s just go up to the mountains, like we planned.”
So we did. It was muggy near the sea but grew into a high, bright, sunny day as the train switchbacked up the mountain. In early spring, plum trees and cherry trees had blossomed against this landscape, blanketing the ground with white petals, and my vocabulary lessons then had been like poems: tree, flowers, falling, petals, snow. Now it was late enough in the season that rice had risen from the watery land near the sea, but in the mountains, spring lingered. The hydrangeas were just beginning to bloom, their clusters of petals faintly green, bleeding into lavender and blue, pressing densely against the windows of the train.
We hiked to an open-air museum beneath a canopy of cedar trees and ate in a mountain village built on the rim of a dormant volcano, and our talk was easy, relaxed, and happy, like our best times together. It was nearly dusk by the time we reached the rotemboro, an outdoor hot springs, and parted at the door. The changing room was all clear pine and running water, tranquil, soothing, and almost empty. I scrubbed carefully from head to toe, sluicing warm water to rinse, walking naked to the rock-lined pool. The air was cool, and the moon was rising in the indigo sky. Two other women were lounging against the smooth stones, chatting, their skin white against the wet gray rocks, their pale bodies disappearing into the water at the waist. Their voices were one soft sound; the trickle of water from the spring, another. Farther away, from beyond the wall, came the splashing and the voices of the men.
I slipped into the steaming water, imagining the patterns of underground rivers that fed these springs, thinking how everything was connected, and how our lives here had grown from such a casual decision made during my first weeks in Jakarta well over two years ago. I’d come back tired from a week in the field inspecting a canal system, and I dropped my suitcase on the cool marble floor, imagining nothing beyond a shower, a plate of nasi goreng, and a drink. My housemate, who worked at the Irish embassy, was leaving for a party and invited me to go, promising good food and better music. I said no at first, but at the last minute I changed my mind. If I hadn’t gone, Yoshi and I would never have met.
The party was in a large house that buzzed with music and laughter. I wore a dark blue silk sheath I’d had made, a perfect fit and a good color for my eyes, and for a while I moved through the rooms, laughing, talking. Then I passed a quiet balcony and, on an impulse, slipped out for some air. Yoshi was leaning against the railing, gazing at the river below. I hesitated, because there was something about his stance that made me wish not to distur
b him. But he turned, smiling in that way he has where his whole face is illuminated, warm and welcoming. He asked if I wanted to come and watch the water.
I did. I crossed the tiled floor and stood beside him at the railing. We didn’t speak much at first, mesmerized by the swift, muddy currents. When we did start talking, we found we had a lot in common. In addition to our work and love of travel, we were the same age, and we were both allergic to beer. Our conversation flowed so swiftly that we didn’t notice the people who came and went, or our empty glasses, or the changing sky, not until the monsoon rain began to pour down with tropical suddenness and intensity. We looked at each other then and started laughing, and Yoshi lifted his hands to the outpouring of the skies. Since we were already drenched, there seemed no point in going inside. We talked on the balcony until the rain ceased as suddenly as it had begun. Yoshi walked me home through the dark and steamy streets. When we reached my house he ran the palms of his hands across my cheeks to smooth away the water, and kissed me.
At first it was easy enough to keep the relationship from gaining traction. I’d had enough of the transitory, long-distance love affairs that happen inevitably for people who travel so much. Then the rains began again. They came early that year, and with an unusual ferocity, overwhelming the city’s open canal systems and flooding the streets. Much of Jakarta was low-lying and susceptible to water, and the sprawling development around the city—a loss of trees and green spaces—had left few places to absorb the rain. The water rose, and rose. One morning fish were swimming in the flooded lawn, and by noon water was five inches deep in the living room. My roommate and I watched on the news as the flood washed away cars, the fronts of buildings, and an entire village of 143 people.
As the water began to recede, Yoshi and two coworkers organized a cleanup at an orphanage. He picked me up in an old Nissan truck he’d borrowed and we drove through the drenched and devastated city. The orphanage grounds were awash in mud and filled with debris. It stank. We worked all that day and all the next, and Yoshi was everywhere, shoveling mud and orchestrating volunteers. Once, he paused beside a boy in a worn red shirt who stood crying in the mud, then picked him up and carried him inside.
When he brought me home at the end of that second day, the skies opened again. Running from the car, reaching for my house keys, I slipped and grabbed a mango tree to keep from falling. A cascade of leaves and twigs showered down, scattering seeds and pollen, desiccated stems. I was already a mess from cleaning. Yoshi took my arm and we fumbled our way inside. You’re shivering, he said, come here. We let our wet clothes fall by the steaming shower. Close your eyes, he said, stepping behind me, the warm water pouring over us, and then his hands were moving in my hair, working the shampoo through every strand, caressing my scalp, massaging my shoulders, the cold and grime draining away, my tension and uncertainties draining away. My arms eased under his touch, he held my breasts like flowers, and I turned.
And now we were here, all these days and miles away, Yoshi’s voice, his laughter, drifting over the wall that divided the hot springs pool. I slid deeper into the water, resting my head on the damp rocks. My limbs floated, faintly luminous, and steam rose; the women across from me chatted softly. They were mother and daughter, I thought, or sisters born years apart, for their bodies were similar in shape, and their gestures mirrored each other’s. I thought again of my own mother, sitting alone in her house.
Lately you seem like a very sad and lonely person. The comment still smarted, but I had to wonder if it was true. I’d left for college just weeks after my father died, numb but determined to escape the silence that had descended on the house like a dark enchantment. Keegan Fall had tried again and again to break it, but I’d sent him away harshly, two times, three times, until he stopped calling. In the years since, I’d moved—from college to grad school, from good jobs to better ones and through a whole series of romances, leaving all that grief behind, never letting myself slow down. Until now, unemployed in Japan, I had paused.
One by one, the women stepped out of the pool, water dripping onto the stones, causing little waves. I remembered my dream, the faces just beneath the surface of the ice. My father used to tell me stories where I was always the heroine and the ending was always happy. Nothing had prepared me for the shock of his death. He had fallen, it was determined in the autopsy, and hit his head on the boat and slipped beneath the water, a freak accident that could not fully be explained, or ever undone. His fishing pole had been recovered days later, tangled in the reeds at the edge of the marsh.
I left the pool and dressed, but Yoshi wasn’t outside yet, so I started walking idly down a path of stones alone. It followed a narrow stream and opened into a pond, as round as a bowl and silvery with moonlight. I paused at the edge. In the darkness on the other side, something stirred.
Not for the first time that quake-riddled day, I held my breath. A great blue heron stood in the shadows, its long legs disappearing into the dark water, its wings folded closely against its body. Then the pond was still, gleaming like mica. Another, smaller heron stirred beside the first. I thought of the two women in the spring, as if they had stepped outside to the pond and been transformed into these silent, beautiful birds. Then Yoshi called my name, and both herons unfolded their wide wings and lifted off, slowly, gracefully, casting shadows on the water before they disappeared into the trees.
“Lucy,” Yoshi called again. “If we hurry, we can catch the next train.”
The heat closed in as we lost altitude, and the hydrangea blossoms against the windows grew older and more ragged, as if the slow, incremental season had been compressed into a single hour. By the time we reached our stop by the sea, the blossoms had disappeared completely, leaving only glossy foliage. We walked home along the narrow cobblestone lanes. Crickets hummed and the ground shook slightly with the surf. Twice, I paused.
“Is that the sea?” I asked.
“Maybe.”
“Not an earthquake?”
Yoshi sighed, a little wearily, I thought. “I don’t know. Maybe a very little one.”
A vase of flowers had tipped over on the table. Several books were scattered on the floor. I wiped up the water and gathered the petals. As I stood, there was a single quick, sharp jolt, so strong that even Yoshi reacted, pulling me into the doorway, where we stood for several minutes, alert again to the earth, its shifting, trembling life. I was so tired; I dreaded the night ahead, with its earthquakes and its dreams. I dreaded the next day, too, all the little disagreements flaring out of nothing, and the silence that would press around me once Yoshi left for work. I thought of the herons at the edge of the pond, spreading their dark wings.
“Yoshi,” I said. “I think I will go see my family, after all.”
Chapter 2
TWO DAYS LATER, WE LEFT FOR THE STATION BEFORE DAWN, the wheels of my carry-on bumping along the cobblestones in the early morning mist. We walked along the curving lane, past the fruit seller and the vending machine that sold sake and beer, past the temple with its garden of little statues and the shop where they made tofu by hand. Yoshi was dressed in his salaryman attire, white shirt, black suit, which I’d once found amusing, but which had begun to seem like a true part of his identity over these past months. Was it just my imagination that with every day we stayed in this place Yoshi was pulled a little further from the person I’d known? Or was he simply becoming more himself, a self I hadn’t seen when we lived in that country of our own?
The trip into Tokyo took about an hour, and we were pressed closer and closer together as the train filled. Yoshi slipped his arm through mine so we wouldn’t be separated when the doors opened and we poured out with the crowd. We’d been very kind to each other, very formal and polite, but on the platform, in the flow of impatient people, the unending river of mostly men in dark suits, Yoshi stopped and turned to face me, slipping a little package into my purse.
“A Webcam,” he explained. “So we can talk while we’re traveling. I’ll see yo
u there in two weeks.” He took my shoulders in his two hands and kissed me, right there, amid the streaming people. “Travel safe,” he said. “Call soon.” Then he entered the river of commuters and was gone.
I found a seat on the airport shuttle. Though I tried to hold on to the memory of Yoshi’s touch, it faded gradually as the rainy landscape flashed by the windows. I settled into the seat and turned my thoughts to the trip ahead, my family. I tried to visit every year, but the move to Japan had interrupted things, and I hadn’t been back in almost two years. Wanderlust was in my blood, I suppose, at least according to the stories I’d heard all my life. My great-grandfather, Joseph Arthur Jarrett, was sixteen years old when Halley’s Comet returned in 1910. Despite the worldwide panic around the comet’s return, he had a clear head and an adventurous spirit; that night he snuck out of the house and walked to the church on the hill, determined to witness history. He was young, a dreamer, and he had a gift that, like his unusual eyes, he would pass down through generations: he could listen to a lock and understand its secrets. The cylinders in the bell tower door turned and clicked in response to his seeking wire. They fell into place, the door swung open, and he climbed the worn limestone steps to the roof. Above, amid the familiar stars, the comet arced across the sky. He lifted his face to it. Like a blessing, is what he thought. Like a gift. The word orbit came from Latin—from orbis, meaning wheel. To my great-grandfather, destined to be a wheelwright like his father and grandfather before him, this strange light seemed to him a sign.
The days that followed turned in familiar cycles of work and meals and sleeping, yet the memory of the comet remained, hidden but present, like a star at noon, like a bright coin in a pocket. When a huge elm was felled by lightning later that summer, my great-grandfather touched its trunk and a dream bloomed, bright and urgent, spreading its leafy arms around him, its thick blossoms luminous, incandescent, soft against his skin. Build a trunk, he seemed to hear, and so he took a section of the tree and hid it in his neighbor’s barn. For a year he measured and cut and planed, in secret. He bound the new boards with strips of hot iron and fashioned thick straps from leather. His heart sang and trembled on the night he finally left, traveling by ship and then by train to The Lake of Dreams, where a distant cousin, Jesse Evanston, no more than a name on a slip of paper, was standing on the platform in the watery air to meet him.