“Hey, you wanna walk with us?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said, and went downstairs.
Outside, traces of light still lingered in the sky, and against that background the streetlamps seemed to shine more clearly than usual. Tsugumi kept being yanked along by Pooch, just the same as before.
“I’m tired today, so we’re only going as far as the beach,” she said.
“Do you walk like this every night?” I asked, surprised. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing Tsugumi was really healthy enough to be doing.
“As if I have any choice! Hell, you’re the one who got the dumb mutt used to these walks. After you left he started making this unbelievable noise every morning, a whine like you can’t imagine, right at the time when you used to take him out. Little Tsugumi with her delicate health was constantly getting woken up by this, you realize. So what else were we supposed to do? Yōko and I pleaded with the brute until he was gracious enough to compromise and let us take him out in the evening instead of the morning. The two of us walk him together.”
“Wow, that’s wonderful!”
“It does seem that getting jerked around like this by Pooch has made me a little stronger than I used to be, so it has its good points.” Tsugumi’s small head was turned so that I saw it in profile. She was smiling.
All her life Tsugumi has had to live with problems in one part of her body or another, but she hardly ever tells you where the pain is, not even as part of a joke. She just keeps it to herself and then takes her anger out on the people around her, or says things she knows will make everyone mad and then goes off to lie alone in her bed. And the girl never gives up.
I found this attitude kind of gallant, but sometimes it got on my nerves.
Night had almost fallen, and the street was deep blue and heavy with heat, and all along the vague white blur of the beach children were out setting off fireworks. We walked to the end of the gravel path, passed by the bridge, and headed toward the shore. We walked up to the top of the embankment that stretches straight out into the sea, and set Pooch free. While he tore off in the direction of the beach, Tsugumi and I climbed up on one of the huge concrete blocks that lined the edge of the sand and sat down, leaning back into two of its corners. Then we opened the cans of cold juice we’d just bought.
The wind felt good. Here and there the final glow of twilight would shine through holes in the thin sheet of gray clouds that hovered up there, flowing off into the distance, and then the light would blink out of sight again. And all the while the darkness went on pushing its way down the sky.
Pooch kept running off until we couldn’t even see him anymore and then coming back with a worried expression on his face and barking up at Tsugumi where she sat on the breakwater, too high up for him to reach. Tsugumi would grin and stretch out her hand and pet him or else give him a whack.
“You’ve really gotten to be good pals with Pooch, haven’t you, Tsugumi?” I said. It moved me to see that their friendship had grown even warmer since the previous summer.
Tsugumi didn’t reply. As long as she kept quiet, she actually seemed like what she was—a younger cousin. But after a while she made a face like she had bitten down on a lemon, and muttered her reply.
“It’s no joke, kid. This is the pits. I feel like some sort of Don Juan who’s gotten himself all tangled up in the passions of one of his young virgins and accidentally ended up married.”
“What are you talking about? That’s supposed to be a metaphor for your friendship with Pooch?” I kind of felt like I knew what she meant, but I wanted to make her explain a little more. I figured I might as well try taking this line. And Tsugumi answered.
“You bet it is, babe! Makes me shudder to think that I’ve gotten this buddy-buddy with a dog. If you consider it objectively it’s pretty gross, you know.”
“Oh please. Is this your idea of being sheepish?” I laughed.
Tsugumi made an ironic face. “Give me a break, Maria! You really don’t understand me at all, do you? I mean, how many years have you and I been together? Try using your brain every once in a while.”
“No, no, I do understand. I was just teasing you,” I said. “But I also know that you don’t have as much of an aversion to Pooch as you pretend.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s true. I do like him, I like Pooch,” said Tsugumi.
The dusk surrounding us was a mass of any number of colors piled one on top of the other, and everything around us seemed to hover in space, deeply blurred, as if we were in a dream. Every so often a wave would hit up against the awkward silhouette of one of the breakwater’s concrete blocks, and the water would dance. The first star glittered brightly in the sky, looking like a tiny white bulb.
“But you see, nasty people have a special kind of nasty-people philosophy. This business with the mutt goes against that,” Tsugumi continued. “A nasty person who gets along with dogs, for heaven’s sake! It’s too easy.”
“A nasty person?” I grinned.
Evidently in the time since we’d last been together, some things had piled up inside Tsugumi—things that, in her own way, she really wanted to get off her chest. She talked to me of her emotions. This was the kind ofthing she would only speak about with me. Ever since that incident with the haunted mailbox I’d been the only person who really understood her, and even when the things she wanted to say had no relation to the way I was living my life, I still got the message.
“Okay, imagine that there’s a huge famine all across the globe.”
“A famine? . . . Sorry, too far out. I can’t imagine it.”
“Maria, you’re a pest. Just shut up and listen, okay? The idea is that I want to be the kind of jerk who could kill Pooch and eat him if it got like that—to a point where there was really nothing left to eat anymore—and not feel anything. Of course I don’t mean one of these half-baked jerks who’d shed a little tear afterward and then go put up a tombstone and whisper to it, ‘I’m so sorry it had to be this way, Pooch, but thanks to you maybe the rest of us will survive.’ I’m not talking about the kind of person who’d take a little chip of bone and make it into a pendant and wear it wherever she went. I want to be able to just laugh and say, ‘Wow, that Pooch sure was delicious!’ and I want to be able to feel really calm as I say it, and if possible I don’t want to feel any regret or any twinges of conscience, you see? Of course that’s just an example.”
The huge gap between the way Tsugumi looked as she sat there with her head slightly cocked, entranced by her own words, her skinny arms wrapped around her knees, and these things she was saying—that gap really made me feel strange. It was like I was seeing something from another world.
“I’d call that a strange person, not a nasty person,” I said.
Tsugumi was staring straight out across the dark ocean. She continued to speak very calmly, in a pleasant tone. “Yeah. That’s the kind of gal you just can’t figure out. Something about her always seems to hold her a little apart from everyone around her, and even though she herself doesn’t understand this stuff that’s going on inside her she doesn’t ever try to stop it, even though she has no idea where it may lead her—and yet you get the feeling that in the end she’s probably right . . . That’s what makes her so cool.”
It wasn’t narcissism. And it wasn’t exactly an aesthetic. Deep down inside, Tsugumi had this perfectly polished mirror, and she only believed in the things she saw reflected there. She never even considered anything else.
That’s what it was.
And yet I liked her even so, and Pooch liked her, and probably everyone else around her liked her too. We all continued to be enchanted by her. It didn’t matter what she put us through, or what awful things she said to us just because she happened to be in a crummy mood. In Pooch’s case, it didn’t matter that he might eventually end up being killed and eaten. Beyond her words and beyond her heart, much deeper than all that, supporting the snarl of who she was, was a light so strong it made you sad. Like a machine that h
as achieved perpetual motion, in some place that even Tsugumi herself wasn’t aware of, that light continued to shine.
“It’s cold now that the sun has gone down. Wanna head back?” Tsugumi said, standing up.
“Gosh, that was unladylike! I could see your undies.”
“So you see my undies, big deal. I can bear that much exposure.
“Yeah, well that doesn’t mean you should bare it all, ha ha.”
“Very funny, kid,” said Tsugumi, laughing. Then she shouted for Pooch. The dog dashed back at full speed, running in a straight line down the long embankment, then started prancing around, barking vigorously, as if he were telling us about all the different things he had just done.
“Yeah, we hear you. Good boy,” Tsugumi said.
We started walking. Pooch kept chasing after us and then trotting on ahead and stopping to wait. And then all of a sudden he jerked up his head as if he had noticed something, and streaked off in the same direction we were headed. I was still wondering what it was that had caught his attention when we heard him start barking his head off down on the other side of the embankment, which was evidently where he had ended up.
“What’s gotten into him?” we exclaimed, and ran over to where we could see him. Pooch was bouncing about excitedly, leaping up and down around a Pomeranian that had been tied to the base of the white statue in the smallish park on the other side of the embankment. The statue is in the middle of a little stand of pines. At first Pooch had been wagging his tail, eager to play, but having a dog as enormous as Pooch come springing at him like that had totally terrified the Pomeranian, and he became desperate. Yipping furiously, he nipped at Pooch. The latter yelped and sprang away, then turned serious. A moment later he’d turned himself into a cold-blooded fighting dog.
In the same instant that I shouted out, “We’ve got to stop them!” Tsugumi growled, “Sic ‘im, Pooch!” It was one of those moments when the difference between our two personalities was made particularly apparent.
There was nothing else to do, so I ran down alone and wrapped my arms around Pooch, using all my strength to hold him back. And then the little runt of a Pomeranian bit my ankle.
“YOW, that hurt! What was that for, you little bastard!” I shouted.
“Yeah baby! Go to it, all three of you!” cried Tsugumi.
I turned around to look at her, and saw that she was laughing. She had an expression on her face like she couldn’t be more thrilled.
And then it happened.
“Hey, Gongorō! Stop it!” called a young man, striding over.
This was our first encounter with Kyōichi, the other person who would be sharing the good old days of this final summer with us. All around us was the shallow darkness of early night, and it was still early in the summer. A blue moon like a painting was just beginning to climb up over the shore.
Kyōichi certainly did make a strange impression on me. He appeared to be about the same age as us. He was tall and slender, but his shoulders and neck were thick and sturdy—a combination that made him look strong in a really cool sort of way. His hair was cut short, his eyebrows looked kind of harsh—if you just glanced at him he seemed like a pleasant, carefree young guy, just the sort of person who ought to be wearing the white polo shirt he had on. But his eyes were a little different. His gaze was strangely deep, and there was a light in them that made it seem as if he knew something huge, something extremely important. Perhaps you could say that, unlike the rest of him, his eyes were old.
He strode over to where I was still sitting, right in the middle of the storm of barking that had marked the renewal of hostilities between Pooch and Gongorō. The latter was jumping around like crazy, making an awful racket. Even so, Kyōichi scooped him up lightly and cradled him in his arms.
“Are you all right?” he said. He stood with his back perfectly straight.
Finally able to release Pooch from the powerful grasp in which I had been holding him, I stood up. “Yes, I’m fine,” I said, “I’m afraid our dog came over and started meddling with yours, so it was our fault. Sorry.”
“Nah, this little guy here is a fighter to start with, and what’s more he isn’t afraid of anything,” said Kyōichi, chuckling. He turned to look at Tsugumi. “How about you, are you okay?”
Tsugumi instantly flicked the channel on her personality.
“Oh yes, thank you.” She smiled shyly.
“Well then, see you around,” said Kyōichi, and walked off in the direction of the beach, still holding Gongorō in his arms.
By now the night had deepened. It seemed to have plunged quickly down upon us during these last few minutes. Pooch stared up at us, as if in reproach, panting slightly through his nose.
“Let’s go,” Tsugumi said, and we started strolling back.
Here and there along the road the shadows of summer lay hidden. There was something sweet about the night air and the energy that surrounded us, something that seemed to infuse the evening with an excited vigor. You felt as if it colored even the fragrance of the breeze. The people we passed were all full of spirit and very boisterous. Everyone seemed to be having a blast.
“We should get home just about the same time that Yōko comes with the cakes, don’t you think?” I said, having completely forgotten the business with the dogs.
“Yeah, and you guys can do what you like with them. You oughta know how I feel about the foul cakes they make at that place,” replied Tsugumi. Her tone was a little vacant, and I decided to take advantage of this to tease her.
“I bet you’ve got your eye oil that guy, right?” I said.
But Tsugumi wasn’t at all ruffled by my comment.
“He sure was something, wasn’t he?” she murmured.
Did she have some kind of premonition then?
“What do you mean? In what way?”
I hadn’t felt anything special when we were with him, so I repeated this question several times, trying to figure out what she meant. But Tsugumi didn’t answer. She just kept walking silently along the dark road with Pooch at her side.
Of the Night
Every so often I’ll have one of these really bizarre nights.
Nights when space itself seems to have shifted a little out of line, and I feel as if I’m on the verge of seeing everything all at once. I lie there in my futon, unable to fall asleep, listening to that clock up there on the wall, and the ticking of the second hand and the rays of moonlight that stream across the ceiling dominate the night, just like they did when I was a little girl. This night will go on forever. And yet it seems that back then nights used to be even longer than this—ever so much longer. I catch a faint whiff of some unknown scent. Perhaps it’s the scent of saying goodbye, so faint it seems slightly sweet.
There was a night like this years ago that I’ll never forget.
I was in one of the upper grades of elementary school. Tsugumi and Yōko and I had gotten completely caught up in some program on TV. We were so passionate about it that it was as if we had all come down with some kind of fever. It was about this girl who went around having all kinds of adventures as she searched for her little sister. Tsugumi didn’t usually fall for overblown gags like that, but this time even she kept coming week after week to watch it with Yōko and me, never missing an episode. It’s odd, but my impressions of the program itself have faded, become lost in a shroud of mist, and all that comes back to me is the feeling of what it was like to watch it—an excited memory of the thrill we felt. The lighting in the TV room, the flavor of the Calpis drink we always had when we watched this show, the vaguely warm breeze that blew out from the fan—all this comes together again inside me just the way it was, vividly real. Watching this show was one of the high points in our week. And then one night we found ourselves confronted with the fact that we had just finished watching the end of the last episode in the series.
At dinner we were all very quiet.
Aunt Masako chuckled. “Oh, I see! That program you all like so much finished t
onight. That’s it, isn’t it?” she said.
Tsugumi, who had been going through her rebellious teens ever since she was born, growled back, “Keep your mouth shut unless you’ve got something worth saying!”
Yōko and I were feeling pretty down too, and though neither of us was in any sort of rebellious period, for once we kind of felt that Tsugumi’s response had hit the mark. I guess this shows how much we loved the program.
That night, having wriggled down into my futon all alone, I found myself in the grips of a wrenching sadness. I was only a child, but I knew the feeling that came when you parted with something, and I felt that pain. I lay gazing up at the ceiling, feeling the sleek stiffness of the well-starched sheets against my skin. My distress was a seed that would grow into an understanding of what it means to say goodbye. In contrast to the heavy ache I would come to know later on in life, this was tiny and fresh—a green bud of pain with a bright halo of light rimming its edges. Unable to sleep, I got up and wandered out into the hall. It was pitch black, and the clock on the wall was tick-tick-ticking with the same loud noise as always. The white of the paper that covered the sliding doors seemed to hover there in the dark, vague and dim, and I felt terribly small. I kept remembering scenes from the show—after all, it had been the center of my life for quite a while now; I’d been so absorbed in it that I’d totally forgotten everything else. The night was still enough that I didn’t want to go back into my room, and I inched my way down the stairs, one barefoot step at a time. I wanted to breathe some fresh air, so I went out into the garden. It was flooded with moonlight, and the hulking silhouettes of the trees stood there quietly, holding their breath.
“Hey, Maria!” Yōko called out suddenly, but somehow I didn’t feel a bit surprised. She was standing there in the garden, dressed in her pajamas. “You couldn’t sleep either?” she whispered. The faint glow of the moon lit her face.
“Nope,” I said, keeping my voice down too.