Goodbye Tsugumi

  “Same for both of us,” Yōko said. Her long hair was braided, and she was bent over, running her fingers along the spiraling vine of a morning glory.

  “Want to go for a walk?” I asked her. “Though I guess we would get yelled at if anyone found out. Were you very quiet when you came out?”

  “Yeah, I was. You don’t have to worry about that.”

  The gate whined quietly as we pushed it open. Suddenly the aroma of the tide drifting through the darkness seemed to grow stronger.

  “Finally we don’t have to be quiet anymore.”

  “Yeah. It feels great out tonight, doesn’t it?”

  Yōko was in pajamas, I was in a thin cotton kimono. I had on my sandals and I wasn’t wearing any socks, but I kept walking on toward the ocean anyway, just as I was. The moon had climbed up high overhead. A line of fishing boats stood along the edge of the road that led up to the peak of the mountain, all of them sunk in such a profound sleep that you would think they were just rotting away. This wasn’t the town we knew. It felt as if we had arrived someplace unrecognizable, fantastically distant from everyday life.

  All of a sudden, Yōko spoke. “Who would ever have guessed that I would find my sister here, of all places!” she cried.

  At first I thought she was just taking on the role of the main character in the TV show again, but after a moment I realized that it was real. Tsugumi was crouched down all alone at the very end of the path that led to the beach, gazing out over the ocean.

  “You dimwits came too?” Tsugumi said, her tone quieter than ever. The way she spoke, it sounded as if she found it perfectly natural that we were there, almost as if we had arranged to meet in advance. She briskly rose to her feet and stood there, a wall of darkness at her back.

  “Tsugumi, you’re barefoot!” cried Yōko.

  Yōko stripped off her socks and gave them to Tsugumi. Tsugumi fooled around for a while, putting them on her hands and saying, “Hmm, is this right?” and stuff like that, but when we totally ignored her she slipped her shockingly bony feet into them and started walking.

  Through rays of moonlight.

  “Maybe walk around the harbor once and head home?” said Yōko.

  “Sure. We can get some sodas before turning back,” I agreed.

  But Tsugumi disagreed. “Suit yourself. I’ve got other plans.”

  “Why? What are you going to do?” I asked.

  She replied clearly, not looking at me. “I’m going to walk.”

  “Walk where? How far?”

  “As far as the next beach, right across the mountain.”

  “Doesn’t that sound kind of dangerous?” said Yōko. Then, “Though to tell the truth, I wouldn’t mind giving it a try myself.”

  There was no one else on the road that climbed the mountain, and it was as black as a cave. The high bluff that bordered the road cut off the moonlight, plunging us into shadow, and we had a hard time just making out the ground beneath our feet. Yōko and I held hands and walked on carefully through this blind world, as if groping our way through the dark. Tsugumi strode rapidly on by herself, a little bit off to the side, keeping in line with the two of us. Her footsteps were so steady and sure that I remember looking at her and finding it hard to believe she was actually walking in the dark like us. The darkness was frightening.

  We had come out on this walk as a way to deal with our sadness, to mourn the end of our favorite TV program. But we had totally forgotten that now, and as we trekked over the peak of the mountain, deep in the heart of night, surrounded by the wind shaking through clusters of trees, we felt a sort of eager excitement. As we made our way farther and farther down the slope of the mountain, the neighboring town, a small fishing village, appeared before us under the dark cover of midnight. Before long the beach came into view.

  The rocky shore was lined with little stands and shops that only stayed open for the summer. They were all boarded up, with an aura of emptiness about them that made you think of ghosts. Way out in the water the flags on the buoys were swaying vigorously back and forth, in time with the roar of the waves. The slight nip in the wind cooled our burning cheeks. We all bought sodas. The clunking of the vending machine in the night seemed to send a shiver of surprise across the entire pitch-black expanse of the beach. The dark ocean undulated before us, blank and vague. Way off in the distance, the lights of our town glittered faintly, like a mirage.

  “It’s like the afterlife or something, huh?” Tsugumi said.

  Yōko and I nodded, murmuring our agreement.

  A little later we started back along the same mountain road we’d come by, and arrived back at the Yamamoto Inn completely worn out. We wished each other a good night and then slipped off to our own rooms and slept so soundly that we might as well have been dead.

  The hardest part came the next morning. At breakfast Yōko and I were so exhausted that we couldn’t even make conversation. The two of us just sat there in silence, rubbing our tired eyes, chewing our food. Compared to the way we’d been the previous night, alive with that strange energy, we might as well have been different people altogether. Tsugumi didn’t even get up.

  There’s something else I know about that night.

  Tsugumi had picked up a white stone while we were out on the beach and taken it with her, and even now it was sitting there in one of the corners of her bookshelf. I really have no idea what Tsugumi was feeling that night. I don’t know what sort of emotions that rock held for her. Maybe it wasn’t anything special at all, maybe she just scooped it up on a whim. And yet whenever I find myself starting to forget that Tsugumi belongs to life, I always think of that stone, of her feeling such an overwhelming urge to walk that she went outside without even putting on her sandals, and every time I remember these things I start to feel sort of sad, and my mind gets very sharp and clear, and I think things through in a very levelheaded way.

  For some reason I was thinking about all this again. Glancing over at the clock, I saw that it was nearly two. The thoughts people have when they can’t get to sleep are generally a little weird. Your mind rambles through the dark, tossing up one dreamy conclusion after another, each one as tender as a bubble. All of a sudden I realized that sometime after that night, at some unknowable point along the way, I had grown up. I wasn’t living here in this town now, not anymore, I was attending a university in Tokyo. It all seemed so bizarre. My hands lay stretched out in the darkness, and somehow they didn’t seem to belong to me.

  Suddenly the door to my room slid open.

  “Hey, get up!” barked Tsugumi.

  She had given me a terrible start, and my pounding heart refused to quiet. It took a few moments before I finally managed to speak.

  “What do you want?”

  Tsugumi sashayed into my room as boldly as if it were hers, and crouched down by my pillow. “I can’t sleep.”

  I was staying in the room right next to Tsugumi’s, so I should probably just have considered myself lucky that this kind of thing hadn’t happened before. I squirmed about in my futon for a bit and sat up.

  “Yeah, well is that my fault?” I said testily.

  “Oh, don’t be so grumpy. Think of it as some kind of karma and help me think up something fun to do. C’mon, be a pal!” Tsugumi grinned.

  It’s only at times like this that Tsugumi assumes this docile attitude, letting you feel as if you’re in control. All at once I found myself remembering the numerous occasions when she had barged in and woken me up with a whack, and how she used to stomp on my hands or feet when I was sleeping, and how she would go in and sneak the dictionary out of my desk while I was in gym class simply because she didn’t feel like bringing her own to school—she claimed it was too heavy! One little dictionary!—and all sorts of other pranks like that. Suddenly I was in the midst of a flashback, a familiar sense of irritation at the unreasonableness of it all, and what I remembered gave me a shock. How on earth could I have forgotten? My relationship with Tsugumi was certainly no endless party.

/>   “Listen, Tsugumi, I’m tired,” I said. I wanted to try putting up a little bit of resistance, just a little, the way I had in the old days. But at moments like this Tsugumi never listened to a word anyone said.

  “Hey, it’s the same, isn’t it?” Tsugumi asked, her eyes glittering.

  “The same as what?”

  “Man, you know what I’m talking about! That night when the three of us went over to the next town, like total idiots. It was just this time of the year. Same season, something about the night that keeps you from getting to sleep. Yōko’s in there snoring her brains out, but she never picks up on these things. She must be the dullest person on the face of the globe.”

  “As a matter of fact I was just about to fall asleep myself.”

  “It’s your fault for staying in this room. You knew I was next door.”

  “What else am I supposed to do, Tsugumi?” I sighed. But to tell the truth, the feeling I had then was pretty good. It all seemed so strange. After all, she and I had been having precisely the same thoughts—it was like telepathy, our minds linking through the night. Every so often night plays these little tricks. A knot of air pushes quietly through the darkness, and a feeling that has converged in some far-off place tumbles down like a falling star and lands just in front of you, and then you wake up. Two people live the same dream. All this takes place in the space of a single night, and the feeling only lasts until morning. The next morning it gets lost in the light, and you’re no longer even sure it happened. But nights like this are long. They continue forever, glittering like a jewel.

  “All right, then, you want to go for a walk?” I asked.

  “Hmm . . . Nah, I don’t have the energy for that,” Tsugumi replied.

  “Well, what do you want to do?”

  “You expect me to think through details like that?”

  “I wish you would before you wake me up!”

  “All right, babe, I got it,” Tsugumi said. “Let’s just get some drinks out of your fridge and go out on the veranda. It’s not great, but I’ll deal.”

  I stood up and went over to the refrigerator. The room I’d been given was actually meant for paying guests, so there were plenty of drinks. I took out a beer for myself and tossed Tsugumi a can of orange juice. She can’t handle any alcohol at all, and no one ever lets her try because every time she does she ends up barfing all over the place.

  We tiptoed down the hall just like we used to in the old days, holding our breath, then quietly opened the door and stepped out onto the veranda. This is where the poles for drying laundry were, and during the daytime there were always lines of towels flapping in the wind, like in a commercial for detergent. The nighttime was different, though—the veranda was empty, with nothing but rows of bare poles. They were rather hefty poles. In between them you could see the stars. The veranda looked out on the mountains, whose heavy green silhouettes seemed to loom toward you, filling your eyes.

  I took a swallow of beer. It was very cold, and the liquid seemed to burrow right down to the pit of my chest. The chill I felt was an echo of the night.

  Tsugumi took a sip of her juice, too.

  “Why do drinks taste so good outside like this, at night?” she murmured.

  “Things like that are important to you, aren’t they, Tsugumi?” I asked.

  But without even asking what I meant, Tsugumi grunted, “Like hell they are!”

  I hadn’t said I was talking about her emotions—it was a matter of sensibility. A few moments of thoughtful silence passed before Tsugumi continued.

  “I may be the sort of chick who’d just get irritated looking at the last leaf on the plant in that O. Henry story, and rip it off, but I’m able to see the beauty in it. Is that what you mean?”

  Her reply left me a bit taken aback. “You know, Tsugumi, I get the feeling that you’ve started speaking more like a human being lately,” I said.

  “Maybe my time is running out.” Tsugumi laughed.

  No, that wasn’t it. It was because of this night.

  On nights like this when the air is so clear, you end up saying things you ordinarily wouldn’t. Without even noticing what you’re doing, you open up your heart and just start talking to the person next to you—you talk as if you have no audience but the glittering stars, far overhead. There are any number of negatives showing nights like this filed in the “Summer Nights” section of my brain. I suppose this night we’re enjoying now, out here on this veranda, will end up tucked away someplace very close to the page for that night when the three of us were young and we just kept walking on and on . . . The knowledge that as long as I went on living I would always have chances to feel these nights made it possible for me to have hope for the future. Lovely nights like tonight. The wonderful scent of the wind—a fragrance reminiscent of the aura of the mountains and the sea, which weaves slowly, translucently through every little nook and cranny of our town. I knew this night would never be back, but that didn’t matter. Just having the possibility, just knowing that I might find myself again in a night like this, in some other summer, was enough to make it all perfect.

  Tsugumi had finished drinking her juice. She leapt up nimbly, making a fast, whooshy sort of standing-up noise, and padded over to the railing, where she could look down on the street.

  “Not a soul in sight,” she said.

  “Hey, Tsugumi?” I asked. “What’s that building over there?”

  Over at the base of the mountain you could see this really giant building, a little bit of the iron scaffolding still visible at the top, and I’d been wondering about it for some time. Even now, with the whole town plunged in darkness, it stood out from the lines of buildings around it.

  “You mean that? It’s a hotel,” Tsugumi replied, glancing back at me.

  “They’re putting up a new hotel? A place that big?”

  “You got it, babe. I kind of figure that must be part of the reason the old pa and ma decided to shut down the inn. Not that I give a damn what happens to the lousy wreck or anything, but when you get right down to it it’s a matter of life and death for us, isn’t it? Of course my father gets to make this bold new start and all, do what he’s always wanted to do with his life, that kind of thing, so maybe there’s no problem, huh? Be sad when the elegant pension goes bust and the four of us end up committing suicide together off in the rugged wilds of the mountains, of course. Nothing left but our skeletons sprawled out in the dirt somewhere, picked clean by wild beasts and bleached by the rain. What a tragedy.”

  “No, you’ll do all right. I’ll come and stay with you every year. And if I ever get married, I’ll come have the ceremony at the pension.”

  “You know what, Maria? Instead of annoying people with these god-awful, hackneyed-as-hell dreams of yours, why don’t you try bringing some college girls along sometime? We don’t get them here. The species doesn’t exist.”

  “What about Yōko?”

  “She doesn’t count. I want someone a little more hip. I mean, the only time I’ve ever even seen chicks like that is on TV,” Tsugumi said, flopping her sandals around as she spoke. “I want to have a chance to look a few over and come up with all kinds of nasty things to say about them.”

  Not counting all the times when she’d had to go visit some hospital or other, Tsugumi had grown up almost without having left the town. It really hurt to think about that.

  I stood up and went over to stand by Tsugumi.

  “You should come visit me in Tokyo,” I said, staring down over the railing. The narrow alley below us was very still, and sunk in shadow.

  “Yeah, maybe. But I don’t know . . . you remember that book Heidi we read when we were kids? I’d feel kinda like that friend of hers with the bad leg.” Tsugumi chuckled sheepishly.

  “Literary classics seems to be the topic of the day.” I laughed.

  Just then, I spotted a familiar-looking dog trotting along the road that passes by the front of the inn. I shouted. “Oh my God! That was what’s-his-name! Gonnosuk
e! . . . no, that’s not right . . . That dog from the other day!”

  Tsugumi leaned out over the railing. “It’s Gongorō!” she cried. Then, in a voice so thunderous that it reverberated down the dark street, she hollered, “Hey Gongorō!” Far away I heard the sound of Pooch waking up and moving around, shaking his chain. It was the first time in ages that I’d seen Tsugumi behave in such an uncool way, and I was shocked.

  Had Tsugumi’s passion actually reached that runt of a dog?

  Gongorō came padding back along the dark road. He stood there for a few moments looking this way and that, trying to figure out where that shout he’d heard had come from. He was really funny to watch, and I was still laughing when I called his name. This time he seemed to have located us all right, and he stood peering up at us, yipping.

  “Hey, who is that?”

  For a moment I had the impression that Gongorō had spoken. And then all of a sudden, as if he were walking into the beam of a spotlight, the guy we’d run into at the park a few days earlier stepped into the glow of a streetlamp. He was much more tanned than he had been the first time we saw him. His black T-shirt seemed to merge with the surrounding dark.

  “Oh, it’s you two.”

  “Tsugumi, isn’t this great! It’s him!” I whispered.

  “Yeah, thanks. I noticed,” she replied. Then she hollered into the street, “Hey moron, what do you call yourself? You got some kind of name?”

  The guy scooped up Gongorō and looked up at us.

  “My name’s Kyōichi. What about you two?”

  “I’m Tsugumi. This here’s Maria. Tell me, whose kid are you?”

  “I’m not living in this town yet, but I’ll be over that way,” he said, pointing toward the mountains. “That new hotel is gonna be my house.”

  “What, is your mother a maid or something?” Tsugumi chuckled. The smile on her face was so brilliant it almost seemed to light up the darkness.

  “As a matter of fact I’m the owner’s son. My parents like it here, so they want to come live in town. I’m going to college over in M., so I’ll come live with them and commute to school.”