The Elephant Vanishes: Stories

  “I shall be acting as your test proctor,” the man finally spoke. Shall. “As soon as you receive your exam booklet, place it facedown on your desk. Do not turn it over. Keep both hands flat on your lap. When I say ‘Begin,’ you may turn it faceup and begin. When there are ten minutes remaining before the end of the test period, I shall say to you, ‘Ten minutes left.’ At that time, check your work to see that you have not made any minor errors. When I say ‘Stop,’ that is the end of the test period. Turn your examination booklet facedown and place your hands on your lap. Is that understood?”

  Silence.

  He looked at his watch again.

  “Well, as I see that we have ten minutes before the beginning of the test, I’d like to have a little talk with you. Please relax.”

  Phew, phew. There were several sighs.

  “I am Chinese and I teach at this school.”

  MY FIRST CHINESE!

  He didn’t look Chinese. But what did I expect? What was a Chinese supposed to look like?

  “In this classroom,” he continued, “Chinese students the same age as yourselves all study as hard as you do…. Now, as you all know, China and Japan are neighboring countries. In order for everyone to enjoy happy lives, neighbors must make friends. Isn’t that right?”

  Silence.

  “Of course, some things about our two countries are very similar and some things are very different. Some things we understand about each other and some things we do not. But isn’t that the same with you and your friends? Even if they are your friends, some things they cannot understand. But if you make an effort, you can still become close. That is what I believe. But in order to do that, we must begin with respect for each other…. That is the first step.”

  Silence.

  “For instance. Suppose many, many Chinese children went to your school to take a test. Just as you yourselves are doing now, sitting at Chinese children’s desks. Think about this, please.”

  Hmm.

  “Suppose that on Monday morning, all of you go back to your school. You go to your desks. And what do you see? You see that there are doodles and marks all over your desks, chewing gum stuck under the seat, one of your classroom slippers is missing. How would you feel?”

  Silence.

  “For instance, you,” he said, turning to point right at me, me with the lowest registration number, “would you be happy?”

  Everyone looked at me.

  I blushed bright red and shook my head.

  “So you see,” he said, turning back to the class again, as everyone’s eyes shifted back to the front of the room, “you must not mark up the desks or stick gum under the seats or go fooling around with what’s inside the desks. Is that understood?”

  Silence.

  “Chinese children speak up louder when they answer.”

  Yes, came forty replies. Or, rather, thirty-nine. My mouth wouldn’t open.

  “Well, then, heads up, chests out.”

  We looked up and swelled to attention.

  “And be proud.”

  • • •

  SOME TWENTY YEARS ON, I’ve completely forgotten the results of the test. All I remember is the school kids walking quietly up the hill and the Chinese teacher. That, and how to hold my head up with pride.

  3.

  THE TOWN WHERE I WENT to high school was a port town, so there were quite a few Chinese around. Not that they seemed any different from the rest of us. Nor did they have any special traits. They were as different from each other as could be, and in that way they were the same as us. When I think about it, the curious thing about individuals is that their singularity always goes beyond any category or generalization in the book.

  There were several Chinese kids in my class. Some got good grades, others didn’t. There was the cheerful type and the dead-quiet character. One who lived in an almost palatial spread, another in a sunless one-room-kitchenette walk-up. Really, all sorts. Though I never did get especially close to any of them. I wasn’t your let’s-make-friends sort of guy. Japanese or Chinese or anything else, made no difference.

  I did, however, meet up with one of them ten years later, though I probably shouldn’t get into that just yet.

  Meanwhile, the scene shifts to Tokyo.

  MY NEXT CHINESE—that is, not counting those high-school Chinese classmates whom I didn’t especially speak to—was a shy girl I got to know at a part-time job during the spring of my sophomore year. She was nineteen, like me, and petite, and pretty. We worked together for three weeks during the break.

  She was exceedingly diligent about work. I did my part, working as hard as I could, I suppose, but whenever I peeked over at her plugging away it was pretty obvious that her idea and my idea of applying oneself weren’t the same animal. I mean, compared to my “If you’re going to do something, it’s worth doing it well,” her inner drive cut closer to the root of humanity. Not that it’s much of an explanation, but this drive of hers had the disturbing urgency of someone whose whole worldly existence was barely held together by that one thread. Most people couldn’t possibly keep up with the pace she maintained; sooner or later they would throw up their hands in frustration. The only one who managed to stick it out to the very end working with her was me.

  Even so, we hardly spoke a word at first. I tried a couple of times to strike up a conversation, but she didn’t seem particularly interested in speaking, so I backed off. The first time we actually sat down and talked was two weeks after we started working together. That morning, for half an hour, she’d been thrown into something of a panic. It was unprecedented for her. The cause of it all was a slight oversight, one small operation out of order. Sure, it was her fault, her responsibility, if it came to that, but from where I stood it seemed like a common enough mishap. A momentary lapse and—glitch! Could have happened to anyone. But not to her. A tiny crack in her head widened into a fissure, eventually becoming a gaping chasm. She wouldn’t, she couldn’t, take another step. At a total loss for words, she froze in place. She was a sorry sight, a ship sinking slowly in the night sea.

  I cut short what I was doing, sat her down in a chair, pried loose her clenched fingers one by one, made her drink some hot coffee. Then I told her, It’s all right, there’s nothing to worry about, nothing’s too late to remedy, you just redo that part again from the beginning and you won’t be so far behind in your work. And even if you are a little behind, it won’t kill you. Her eyes were glazed, but she nodded silently. With some coffee in her, she began to calm down.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  That lunch break, we talked about this and that. And that was when she told me she was Chinese.

  WHERE WE WORKED was a tiny, dark, small-time publisher’s warehouse in Bunkyo Ward, downtown Tokyo. A dirty little open sewer of a stream ran right beside it. The work was easy, boring, busy. I got order slips, which told us how many copies of what books to haul out to the entrance. She would bind these up with cord and check them off against the inventory record. That was the whole job. There was no heating in the place, so we had to hustle our buns off to keep from freezing to death. Sometimes it was so cold I thought we wouldn’t be any better off shoveling snow at the airport in Anchorage.

  At lunchtime, we’d head out for something hot to eat, warming ourselves for the hour until our break was up. More than anything, the main objective was to thaw out. But from the time she had her panic, little by little we found ourselves on speaking terms. Her words came in bits and pieces, but after a while I got the picture. Her father ran a small import business in Yokohama, most of the merchandise he handled being bargain clothing from Hong Kong. Although Chinese, she herself was Japanese-born and had never once been to China or Hong Kong or Taiwan. Plus, she’d gone to Japanese schools, not Chinese. Hardly spoke a word of Chinese, but was strong in English. She was attending a private women’s university in the city and hoped to become an interpreter. Meanwhile, she was sharing her brother’s apartment in Komagome, or, to borrow her turn of
phrase, she’d fallen in with him. Seemed she didn’t get along well with her father. And that’s the sum total of what I found out about her.

  Those two weeks in March passed along with the sleet of the season. On the evening of our last day of work, after picking up my pay from accounting and after some hesitation, I decided to ask my Chinese co-worker out to a discotheque in Shinjuku. Not that I had any intention of making a pass at her. I already had a steady girlfriend since high school, though if the truth be told we were beginning to go our separate ways.

  The Chinese girl thought it over a few seconds, then said, “But I’ve never been dancing.”

  “There’s nothing to it,” I said. “It’s not ballroom dancing. All you have to do is move to the beat. Anyone can do it.”

  FIRST, WE WENT and had some beer and pizza. No more work. No more freezing warehouse. What a liberating feeling! I was more jovial than may have been usual; she laughed more, too. Then we went to the disco and danced for two whole hours. The place was nice and warm, swimming with mirror balls and incense. A Filipino band was pounding out Santana covers. We’d work up a sweat dancing, then go sit out a number over a beer, then, when the sweat subsided, we’d get up and dance again. In the colored strobe lights, she looked like a different person from the shy warehouse stock girl I knew. And once she got the hang of dancing, she actually seemed to enjoy it.

  When we’d finally danced ourselves out, we left the club. The March night was brisk, but there was a hint of spring in the air. We were overheated from all that exercise, so we just walked, aimlessly, hands in our pockets. We stopped into an arcade, got a cup of coffee, kept walking. We still had half the school break ahead of us. We were nineteen. If someone had told us to, we would have walked clear out to the Tama River.

  At ten-twenty, she said she had to go. “I have to be home by eleven.” She was almost apologetic.

  “That’s pretty strict,” I said.

  “My brother thinks he’s my guardian protector. But I guess I can’t complain, since he’s giving me a roof over my head.” From the way she spoke, I could tell she really liked her brother.

  “Just don’t forget your slipper,” I said with a wink.

  “My slipper?” Five, six steps later, she burst out laughing. “Oh, you mean like Cinderella? Don’t worry, I won’t forget.”

  We climbed the steps in Shinjuku Station and sat down on a platform bench.

  “You know,” I said, “do you think I could have your phone number? Maybe we can go out and have some fun again sometime.”

  She bit her lip, nodded, then gave me her number. I scribbled it down on a matchbook from the disco. The train came in and I put her on board and said good night. Thanks, it was fun, see you. The doors closed, the train pulled out, and I crossed over to the next track to wait for my train bound for Ikebukuro. Leaning back on a column, I lit up a cigarette and thought about the evening. From the restaurant to the disco to the walk. Not bad. It’d been ages since I’d been out on a date. I’d had a good time and I knew she had a good time, too. We could be friends. Maybe she was a little shy, maybe she had her nervous side. Still, I liked her.

  I put my cigarette out under my heel and lit another one. The sounds of the city blurred lazily into the dark. I shut my eyes and took a deep breath. Nothing was amiss, but I couldn’t shake this nagging feeling. Something wasn’t right. What was it? What had I done?

  Then it hit me, right when I got off the train at Mejiro. I’d put her on the Yamanote Loop Line going the wrong way.

  My dormitory was in Mejiro, four stops before hers. So she could have taken the same train as me. It would have been all so simple. Why had I taken it upon myself to see that she got on a train going the opposite way around? Did I have that much to drink? Was I thinking too much, or only, about myself? The station clock read 10:45. She’d never make her curfew. I hoped she’d realized my mistake and switched to a train going the right way. But I doubted she would have. She wasn’t that type. No, she was the type to keep riding the train the wrong way around. But shouldn’t she have known about this mistake from the start? She had to know she was being put on the wrong train. Great, I thought. Just great.

  • • •

  IT WAS TEN AFTER ELEVEN when she finally got off at Komagome Station. When she saw me standing by the stairs, she stopped in her tracks with this expression, like she didn’t know whether to laugh or fume. It was all I could do to take her by the arm and sit her down on a bench. She put her bag in her lap and clutched the strap with both hands. She placed her feet straight out in front of her and stared at the toes of her white pumps.

  I apologized to her. I told her I didn’t know why I’d made that stupid mistake. My mind must have been elsewhere.

  “You honestly made a mistake?” she asked.

  “Of course. If not, why would I have done such a thing?”

  “I thought you did it on purpose.”

  “On purpose?”

  “Because I thought you were angry.”

  “Angry?” What was she talking about?

  “Yeah.”

  “What makes you think I’d be angry?”

  “I don’t know,” she said in a shrinking voice.

  Two tears spilled from her eyes and fell audibly onto her bag.

  What was I to do? I just sat there, not saying a word. Trains pulled in, discharged passengers, and pulled out. People disappeared down the stairs, and it was quiet again.

  “Please. Just leave me alone.” She smiled, parting her bangs to the side. “At first, I thought it was a mistake, too. So I thought, Why not just go on riding the opposite way? But by the time I passed Tokyo Station, I thought otherwise. Everything was wrong. I don’t ever want to be in a position like that again.”

  I wanted to say something, but the words wouldn’t come. Wind blew stray pieces of newspaper to the far end of the platform.

  “It’s okay.” She smiled weakly. “This was never any place I was meant to be. This isn’t a place for me.”

  This place Japan? This lump of stone spinning around in the blackness of space? Silently I took her hand and placed it on my lap, resting my hand lightly on hers. Her palm was wet.

  I forced words out: “There are some things about myself I can’t explain to anyone. There are some things I don’t understand at all. I can’t tell what I think about things or what I’m after. I don’t know what my strengths are or what I’m supposed to do about them. But if I start thinking about these things in too much detail, the whole thing gets scary. And if I get scared, I can only think about myself. I become really self-centered, and without meaning to, I hurt people. So I’m not such a wonderful human being.”

  I didn’t know what else to say. And she said nothing. She seemed to wait for me to continue. She kept staring at the toe of her shoes. Far away, there was an ambulance siren. A station attendant was sweeping the platform. He didn’t even look at us. It was getting late, so the trains were few.

  “I enjoyed myself with you,” I said. “It’s true, really. I don’t know how to put this, but you strike me as a real person. I don’t know why. Just being with you and talking, you know.”

  She looked up and stared at me.

  “I didn’t put you on the wrong train on purpose,” I said. “I just wasn’t thinking.”

  She nodded.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” I said. “We can go somewhere and talk.”

  She wiped away the traces of her tears and slipped her hands in her pockets. “Thank you. I’m sorry for everything.”

  “You shouldn’t apologize. It was my mistake.”

  We parted. I stayed on the bench and smoked my last cigarette, then threw the empty pack in the trash. It was close to midnight.

  Nine hours later, I realized my second error of the evening. A fatal miss. I’m so stupid. Together with the cigarette pack, I’d thrown away the disco matches with her phone number on them. I checked everywhere. I went to the warehouse, but they didn’t have her number. I tried the telephone
directory. I even tried the student union at her school. No luck.

  I never saw her again, my second Chinese.

  4.

  NOW THE STORY of my third Chinese.

  An acquaintance from high school, whom I mentioned earlier. A friend of a friend, whom I’d spoken to maybe a few times.

  This happened when I’d just turned twenty-eight. Six years after I got married. Six years during which time I’d laid three cats to rest. Burned how many aspirations, bundled up how much suffering in thick sweaters, and buried them in the ground. All in this fathomlessly huge city Tokyo.

  It was a chilly December afternoon. There was no wind; the air was so cold that what little light filtered through the clouds did nothing to clear away the gray of the city. I was heading home from the bank and stepped into a glass-fronted café on Aoyama Boulevard for a cup of coffee. I was flipping through the novel I’d just bought, looking up now and then, watching the passing cars.

  Then I noticed the guy standing in front of me. He was addressing me by name.

  “That is you, isn’t it?” he was saying.

  I was taken aback. I answered in the affirmative, but I couldn’t place the guy. He seemed to be about my age, and wore a well-tailored navy blazer and a suitably colored rep tie. Something about the guy made him seem a little worn down. His clothes weren’t old, and he didn’t look exhausted. Nothing like that. It had more to do with his face. Which, although presentable, gave me the feeling that his every expression had been thrown together on the spur of the moment. Like mismatched dishes set out in make-do fashion on a party table.

  “Mind if I sit down?” he said, taking the seat opposite me. He fished a pack of cigarettes and a gold lighter from his pocket. He didn’t light up, though; he merely put them on the table. “Well, remember me?”

  “Afraid not,” I confessed. “I’m sorry, I’m terrible about these things. I’m terrible with people’s faces.”

  “Or maybe you’d just rather forget the past. Subliminally, that is.”