Kitchen

  The dark shadows of the mountains loomed blacker than the night sky over the town below. Drunken tourists were everywhere (looking cold in their padded winter kimonos), laughing loudly. I felt strangely lighthearted. I was excited. Alone under the stars, in a strange place.

  I walked along, stepping on my shadow, watching it lengthen and shorten with every streetlight I passed. Avoiding the noisy bars that frightened me, I kept going until I was almost at the station. I peered into the darkened windows of souvenir shops and I spotted the light coming from a small eatery that was still open. Through the frosted-glass door I saw it had only one customer, who was sitting at the counter. I opened the door with a sense of relief and went in.

  I craved something heavy and filling, so I ordered deep-fried pork in broth over rice. “Katsudon, please,” I said.

  “I have to fry the pork,” said the counterman. “It’ll take a while. That okay with you?” I nodded. The place was new and smelled of clean, white wood. Everything was carefully tended; it had a good atmosphere. This sort of place usually has great food. While I waited, I spied a pink telephone an arm’s length away.

  I reached for it and picked up the receiver. It felt very natural to pull out Chika’s note and dial the number of the inn where Yuichi was staying.

  While the lady at the desk was transferring the call to Yuichi’s room, I had a sudden thought. The forlornness I had felt in relation to Yuichi since hearing about Eriko’s death was linked with the idea of “telephone.” Since then, even when he was standing next to me, I had felt as if Yuichi were in some other world, at the other end of a telephone line. And that other world was darker than the place where I was. It was like the bottom of the sea.

  Yuichi answered. “Hello?”

  “Yuichi?” It was a relief to hear his voice.

  “Mikage, is that you? How did you know where I was? Ah, of course, Chika.” His words sounded far away, traveling over the cable, through the night. I closed my eyes, just listening to that voice I missed so much. It was like lonely waves against the shore.

  “So,” I said, “what do they have there, where you’re staying?”

  “Well, there’s a Denny’s. Ha, ha, just kidding. Let’s see, there’s a shrine on the mountaintop; I guess it’s famous. At the base of the mountain there’s this inn that serves nothing but tofu—what they call ‘monk’s food’—which is what I had for dinner.”

  “What kind of food is that? Sounds interesting.”

  “Oh, right, taking a professional interest, are you? Well, it’s tofu, tofu, and more tofu. I mean, it’s good, but still, it’s just tofu. Savory custard, tofu baked with miso, fried tofu, citron, sesame seeds—everything with tofu. Even the clear soup is served with—surprise—egg tofu floating in it. I was dying to sink my teeth into something solid, and I thought, well, they’ll have to serve rice at the end, anyway—but no! They gave us soupy rice in tea. I felt like an old man.”

  “That’s funny—me too. I’m starving right now.”

  “What, don’t they serve food at your inn?”

  “Yes, but only things I hate.”

  “Tough break, huh? The odds against that are enormous.”

  “It’s okay, though. Tomorrow we’ll have great food.”

  “Lucky you. Let me try to guess what I’ll get for breakfast . . . tofu in hot water, I’ll bet.”

  “Right. Probably over a charcoal fire, in a little earthenware pot. Yes, that’s it.”

  “Now that I think about it, Chika loves tofu. No wonder she said this place was so great. And it is—I mean, it has these big windows, with a view of a waterfall and all. But a growing boy like me wants nice, fattening foods, as greasy as possible. It’s strange, isn’t it? Both of us under the same night sky, both with empty bellies.” Yuichi laughed.

  I know this is incredibly stupid, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him, “Hey, I’m about to eat pork and rice!” It seemed like the worst kind of treachery. I couldn’t destroy Yuichi’s picture of us starving together.

  At that moment I had a thrillingly sharp intuition. I knew it as if I held it in my hands: In the gloom of death that surrounded the two of us, we were just at the point of approaching and negotiating a gentle curve. If we bypassed it, we would split off into different directions. In that case we would forever remain just friends.

  I knew it. I knew it with absolute certainty.

  I was at a loss as to what to do. And after all it would be okay to ask.

  “When are you coming back?”

  After a silence Yuichi said, “Very soon.”

  He’s a bad liar: I was sure he would stay there as long as his money held out. This was the same Yuichi who had delayed telling me about Eriko’s death and kept his depression to himself. That was his nature.

  “Well, see you later, then,” I said.

  “Right. Later.” Perhaps not even he himself understood why he had to run away.

  “Don’t slit your wrists, okay?” I said, joking.

  He laughed and said good-bye.

  As soon as I hung up I was hit by a wave of exhaustion. My hand still resting on the receiver, I stared intently at the glass door of the restaurant, listening to the wind rattling outside. People walked past, complaining about the cold. Day had turned to night, and night was passing in the same way all over the world. Now I felt really alone, at the bottom of a deep loneliness that no one could touch.

  People aren’t overcome by situations or outside forces; defeat invades from within, I thought. I had lost my last ounce of strength. Before my eyes something was coming to an end, something I didn’t want to end, but for which I lacked the energy to suffer, much less fight. There was only a leaden hopelessness in me.

  Maybe someday I’d be able to think it over calmly, in a brighter place than this, full of sunlight and flowers. But by then it would be too late.

  My katsudon was ready. I perked up and split my chopsticks. Thinking, an army travels on its stomach, I contemplated my meal. Although it looked exceptionally delicious, that was nothing to the way it tasted. It was outrageously good.

  “This is incredible!” I blurted out spontaneously to the counterman.

  “I thought you’d like it.” He smiled triumphantly.

  You may say it’s because I was starving, but remember, this is my profession. This katsudon, encountered almost by accident, was made with unusual skill, I must say. Good quality meat, excellent broth, the eggs and onions handled beautifully, the rice with just the right degree of firmness to hold up in the broth—it was flawless. Then I remembered having heard Sensei mention this place: “It’s a pity we won’t have time for it,” she had said. What luck! And then I thought, ah, if only Yuichi were here. I impulsively said to the counterman, “Can this be made to go? Would you make me another one, please?”

  That’s how I came to find myself standing alone in the street, close to midnight, belly pleasantly full, a hot takeout container of katsudon in my hands, completely bewildered as to how to proceed.

  Whatever was I thinking of? Now what do I do? I was wondering that when a taxi approached and squealed to a stop, which solved the dilemma. I announced my destination. “I’d like to go to Isehara, please.”

  “Isehara?” screeched the driver, turning to look at me. “It’s more than all right with me, but it’s far. It’s going to be expensive, you know.”

  “Yes, but it’s rather urgent.” I acknowledged the fact calmly, like Joan of Arc before the Dauphin. I was even convincing myself it was normal. “When we get there I’ll pay the fare. But I’d like you to wait about twenty minutes while I take care of some business, and then bring me back here.”

  “A matter of love, is it?”

  I smiled ruefully. “Something along those lines.”

  “Okay, then, let’s get going.”

  The taxi set off for Isehara in the night, the katsudon and myself in tow.

  I drowsed, overcome once more by the exhaustions of the day, while we flew up the practically empt
y road. Suddenly I awoke. I had a clear impression that only my consciousness was awake, while my arms and legs still slept, all nice and warm. When I sat up to look out the window in the darkened cab, the rest of my body came to life. The driver said, “We’re almost there. We made good time.”

  I agreed and looked up at the sky.

  The moon shone down from high above, crossing the sky, erasing the stars in its path. It was full. I watched it go behind a cloud, completely hidden, and reemerge. In the hot car, I fogged the window with my breath. We passed by the silhouettes of trees and fields and mountains, like cutout pictures. Once in a while a truck would roar past us, then all would go back to utter stillness. The asphalt glistened in the moonlight.

  Soon we were in Isehara.

  Immersed in the deep, dark night were rows of shops and houses. Mixed among the roofs of homes were the torii gates of numberless little Shinto shrines. We chugged up the narrow sloping road. The line of the mountain cable car swung heavily in the gloom.

  The driver said, “You know, there used to be many monks in this area, and they couldn’t eat meat, so they invented all these different ways to eat tofu. Nowadays the inns are quite well-known for it. You should come here for lunch sometime and try it.”

  “I’ve heard.” I was squinting at the paper Chika had given me, trying to read it by the light of the evenly spaced street lamps. “Ah!” I said. “Please stop at the next corner. I’ll be back soon.”

  “Sure thing,” he said, bringing the cab to a sudden halt.

  * * *

  It was bone-chillingly cold, and soon my hands and cheeks were frozen. I took out my gloves and put them on. I climbed the hill in the moonlight, the katsudon in my backpack.

  I had an uneasy premonition and it didn’t prove wrong. The inn where Yuichi was staying was not the old-fashioned kind, which would have been easy to get into in the middle of the night. At the front entrance the automatic glass door was securely locked, as was the emergency exit at the bottom of the outer stairs.

  I walked back down the path to call the inn, but no one answered. That was reasonable. It was midnight, after all.

  I felt puzzled as I stood before the darkened building: What on earth am I doing all the way out here?

  Then, unwilling to give up, I walked around to the back, inching my way along a tiny path next to the emergency exit. Just as Yuichi had said, from the garden you could see the waterfall, and each room faced the garden, which was no doubt a selling point. But every window was dark. I sighed, contemplating the situation. A railing ran along the cliff, and the high, thin stream kept up a steady sound of falling water against the mossy rocks below. White flecks of cold-looking spray gleamed in the dark. The whole waterfall was illuminated here and there by amazingly bright green lights that brought the trees into almost unnatural relief. The scene reminded me of the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland. Thinking, what a fake-looking green, I turned around and once more gazed up at the row of darkened windows.

  Just then, somehow, I knew.

  The room in the near corner, the window reflecting green light—that was Yuichi’s.

  I felt at any moment I would be peering through that window. I began to climb up a pile of garden stones against the wall.

  Looking up, I saw the edge of an ornamental ledge that ran around the building between the first and second floors. It occurred to me that I could just reach it on tiptoe. Carefully gauging the stability of the haphazardly stacked pile of stones, I took a second step, then a third, and I got even nearer. Facing a pair of shutters, I tentatively stretched out a hand. I just barely got a grip. Determined, I jumped and managed to cling fast to a shutter with one hand. Making a supreme effort, I was able to launch the other hand over the top of the ornamental ledge and held onto the tile with all my strength. Suddenly, as I hung there, pressed vertically against the side of the building, what few athletic skills I had seemed to leave me with an audible sssshhhhh.

  Still holding fast to the tile at the jutting edge of the ornamental ledge, stretched to the maximum, I found myself in a fix. My arms were numb with cold, and my backpack was working itself off one shoulder and down my arm.

  Look at you, I thought. Thanks to a sudden whim, here you are hanging from a roof, panting white puffs of breath. You’ve really outdone yourself this time.

  The stones I had climbed up on seemed to loom dark and far away. The roaring of the waterfall reverberated desperately. I had no choice: I gave it everything I had and pulled myself up, dangling from the ledge. I lifted the top half of my body up and over, kicking off the wall with grim determination.

  I heard a ripping sound, and a searing pain shot up my right arm. I managed to roll myself onto the roof on all fours. My legs made a splashing noise as I lolled in a filthy pool of what must have been rain water.

  Still lying down, but having reached a haven, I looked at my arm. It was covered in red from the bleeding wound. It made me dizzy to look at it.

  I shrugged off my pack. Lying there on my back, I looked up at the roof of the inn and, staring at the glowing moon and clouds, I thought, really, we’re all in the same position. (It occurred to me that I had often thought that in similar situations, in moments of utter desperation. I would like to be known as an action philosopher.)

  We all believe we can choose our own path from among the many alternatives. But perhaps it’s more accurate to say that we make the choice unconsciously. I think I did—but now I knew it, because now I was able to put it into words. But I don’t mean this in the fatalistic sense; we’re constantly making choices. With the breaths we take every day, with the expression in our eyes, with the daily actions we do over and over, we decide as though by instinct. And so some of us will inevitably find ourselves rolling around in a puddle on some roof in a strange place with a takeout katsudon in the middle of winter, looking up at the night sky, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  Ah, but the moon was lovely.

  I stood up and knocked on Yuichi’s window.

  I waited for a response for what seemed like a pretty long time. The cold was beginning to penetrate through my wet pants when the light popped on in the room and Yuichi appeared, looking scared to death.

  Only the upper half of my body was visible over the ledge. Yuichi stared at me, his eyes perfect circles. “Mikage?” His lips formed my name. I knocked again and nodded, yes. Flustered, he opened the window. I stretched out a frozen hand and he pulled me in.

  I blinked, my eyes unaccustomed to the sudden light. The room was so warm it was like another world. In bits and pieces, my scattered mind and body seemed to become one again.

  “I came to deliver a katsudon,” I said. “It didn’t seem fair that only I should get to eat, the katsudon was so delicious.”

  I took it from my backpack.

  The fluorescent light shone on the new green tatami mat. The television was on, the sound low. The covers on the futon from which Yuichi had just risen still bore the shape of his body.

  “Something like this happened to us before,” said Yuichi. “Our dream conversation. Isn’t this like that?”

  I laughed. “Shall we sing the song? The two of us, together?” The moment I saw Yuichi I lost all sense of reality. Suddenly all the time we’d spent together, even the fact that we’d lived in the same place, seemed like a far-off dream. Yuichi was not in this world now. His cold eyes frightened me.

  “Yuichi, could you make some tea? But then I have to get going again.” Even if this is a dream, I wanted to add.

  “Sure,” he said, picking up the thermos of hot water and the teapot. He made tea. I drank it, holding the cup in both hands. Relief at last. I was coming back to life.

  Then I became aware of the heavy atmosphere in the room. I felt that I was inside Yuichi’s nightmare, and that if I stayed here too long I, too, would become a part of it, destined to be snuffed out in the gloom. I didn’t know if it was either a hazy intuition or fate. I said, “Yuichi, you don’t really want to go ba
ck, do you? You’re trying to separate yourself from the strange life you’ve been living, you’re trying to start over. It’s no good lying to me. I know it.” Although my words were spoken in utter desperation, I was strangely calm. “But right now there’s this katsudon. Go ahead, eat it.”

  In the ensuing silence, I felt my chest compress so tightly that it made me want to cry. With downcast eyes, Yuichi guiltily took the katsudon. But in that tomblike atmosphere we got a boost from something I could not have foreseen.

  “Mikage, what happened to your hand?” said Yuichi, noticing my wound.

  I smiled and showed him my palm. “Oh, it’s nothing. Come on, eat at least a little of that before it gets cold.”

  Although he still looked as if he didn’t understand what was happening, he said, “Yes, this looks great.” He removed the lid and began to eat the katsudon the counterman had packaged so carefully. My spirits began to lift; I had done all I could.

  I knew it: the glittering crystal of all the good times we’d had, which had been sleeping in the depths of memory, was awakening and would keep us going. Like a blast of fresh wind, the richly perfumed breath of those days returned to my soul.

  More family memories.

  Yuichi and I playing computer games one night while we waited for Eriko to come home. After that, sleepy-eyed, the three of us going out for egg and vegetable pancakes. A hilarious comic book Yuichi had given me to keep me from dying of boredom at work. Eriko, reading it, laughing till she cried. The smell of omelets one sunny Sunday morning. The feeling of a blanket being gently pulled over me while I slept on the floor. The swish of Eriko’s skirt as she walked—me barely awake, following her slender legs through half-open eyes. Yuichi bringing a drunken Eriko home in the car, the two of them walking up to the door, their arms around each other. The day of a summer festival, Eriko tightening my obi with a jerk; the color of a red dragonfly dancing in a frenzy in the evening air that night.

  Truly happy memories always live on, shining. Over time, one by one, they come back to life. The meals we ate together, numberless afternoons and evenings.