A Woman's Nails Read online

  “Welcome back, Grandpa”

  “Please watch over the family and protect it, Grandma”

  “Give me the strength to endure that bitch of a mother-in-law . . .”

  And so on.

  This morning the sun deigned to make an appearance. An unenthusiastic participant in the season, he’s been for the past several weeks. The summer has been so cool, according an article in the Daily Yomiuri, that even beer sales are suffering.

  All the news that’s fit to print.

  I take my bicycle to Seaside Momochi drawn by images of the beach crowded with young women in colorful bikinis dancing to reggae brighten my mood as I pedal away. When I arrive, however, I discover that the beach is all but deserted. There’s a small group of high school boys, thin as green beans and nut brown, playing soccer in the sand, but there isn’t a bikini top to be seen, or a note of island music to bob your head to. Even the umie no ie beach houses that sell yakisoba and beer have been boarded up, closed for business until after the holiday. I’ve been told the gates of Hell open up on the sea floor during the Bon Festival, but I didn’t think anyone was superstitious enough to believe it. Not in this day and age with an even more frightening reality, the 21st century is just seven years away from gobbling us up. Well, apparently, the Japanese are, and they must think I’m tempting fate when I wade waist-deep in the water.

  I don’t stay long. The beach is one of the most depressing places when it is quiet. Nothing but the flat expanse of the gray sea to remind you how ridiculously insignificant and alone you are in the world.

  On the way back to my apartment, I ride the narrow and meandering streets of Tôjin Machi past temples and cemeteries. The smell of incense fills the air. Muted voices come from a charnel house. A family of five emerges from its door, carrying a paper lantern to guide the souls back to their home.

  When I return to my apartment building, a large white paper lantern with a family crest in black is hanging near the entrance, reminding me that my landlord’s mother passed away a few months ago. If Reina and I were still speaking to each other, I would ask her what Japanese customs expect of me under the circumstances. Do I bring them a gift? Do I hand over an ornate envelope filled with cash? Do I put my hands together and with eyes closed chant, "Namu amida butsu"[19]? Culturally out of the loop as I am, I haven’t the slightest of clues as to what to do.

  I check my mailbox before passing through the front gate. It’s been so long—four or five weeks now—since I last received a letter from anyone that I seldom bother to check anymore. I clean out the mailbox as eagerly as you might sift through a garbage bin, then clump up the stairs with the thick bundle of junk mail in my arms. Considering the silence that has replied all the letters I have penned to friends and family a like, I would probably have better luck getting a response were I to slip a note into a bottle and toss it into the gray sea.

  Back in my apartment, I sift through the usual fliers for adaruto video delivery and “costume play” blowjob services, menus from Pizza California and the neighborhood diners and udon shops, business card-sized scraps of paper from sarakin (loan sharks), and packets of pocket tissues inserted with advertisements for terekura (telephone clubs). This new racket is apparently aimed at getting middle-aged men to part with their cash on the slim, though not entirely hopeless, odds that they might be able to hook up with school girls willing to sell their time, their panties, and even their bodies to them. What an odd country I’m living in. Then there’s my electrical bill—down from last month—my water bill—up—and, unexpectedly, a pink envelope.

  My name and address is written in neat handwriting on the front, but there is no return address, no name, no hint of who might have sent it, save that it has come from a young woman, or, perhaps, an effeminate man. In this land of rising perversions, you never can tell. I open the letter and, at the bottom of the second page printed in capital letters, find the name of the woman who still haunts me.

  Why now, Mie? Why after all these months?

  I open the balcony window to inject a bit of life into the stale air of my apartment. A black butterfly mottled with orange flutters clumsily by. The ataractic drone of a Buddhist priest chanting sutras and the tap, tap, tapping on a wooden bell rises from my landlord’s second floor apartment. On the street below, there isn’t a soul; everyone has returned home, just as Mie’s thoughts have returned to me on this, the first day of Bon.

  When Mie and I were still dating, she would often send me cute letters written in her simple but honest English. They were often illustrated with cartoon likenesses of herself. This letter, I see, is written entirely in Japanese, save her name at the end. She has added no furigana notations over the Chinese characters to clue me in as to how to read them.

  “You must have quite the high opinion of me, Mie, assuming I’d be able to read Japanese by now.”

  I sit down on the floor before the coffee table armed with a Chinese character dictionary, a Japanese-English dictionary and a notebook. For each kanji I cannot read right out, I have to first copy the pictogram down in the notebook counting out the number of strokes required to draw it. Then, I trawl through the dictionary of Chinese characters, in which the pictograms are listed according to their stroke number.

  Most of the characters in Japanese have two or more ways of being read, depending upon if they stand alone or are part of a compound, and if they are part of a compound, where they stand in that compound. That is, the position of the kanji at the beginning or at the end of a compound word also affects how the character is read. A simple kanji, say the one that means “to go”, is read “iku”. In the word “bank”, that same character comes second and is read "kô" (ginkô), while in the word “queue”, it comes first and is pronounced “gyô” (gyôretsu). If that isn’t confusing enough for you, try memorizing all 1945 of the Chinese characters for everyday use.

  Once I’ve got a fair idea how to read a particular word written in kanji, I then have to thumb through my well-worn Japanese-English dictionary to find out what the word actually means. It’s excruciatingly slow going, but I’m not about to give up until I’ve come to the end of the letter and have understood everything Mie has written.

  The first sentences are straightforward enough. I don’t even have to consult my dictionaries.

  How have you been? Thank you for your letter. It seems your job is going well . . .

  I can’t help but laugh. I must have written Mie back in May or so when everyone at the office was still treating me like the Christ entering Jerusalem. How quickly things can change. Jesus found that out for himself, too.

  After I got your last letter, I wrote a reply, but never sent it. I’m really sorry about that.

  “Hontô-ni gomen nasai,” she wrote. “I’m really sorry . . .” The words as I decipher them come off the page as if spoken slowly from Mie’s very own lips, her familiar voice emanating from the page of the pink stationery.

  How many times did I hear her say these words? The first time I learned the word “shigoto”, we were lying on her bed in the thick hours of morning, hung over after having cleaned out her refrigerator of all the beer and namazake it yielded the night before. “Shigoto shitakunai,” she said, but I couldn’t understand. “I don't wanna go to work,” she repeated for me in English. “Shigoto shitakunai.”

  “Boku mo,” I replied. “Neither do I.”

  Words. I learned so many of them from her and each one remains to haunt me with memories, to ensure that no matter how much time passes between the present and Mie’s final “sayônara”, there will always be a lexicon of daily reminders of her in the Japanese vocabulary to sneak up on me and say, “Here I am, Peador! Thought you could forget about me, didn’t you?”

  “Hontô-ni gomen nasai,” she is telling me. She is sorry. I remember her hand in mine, short, tanned fingers holding my hand so tightly I thought she’d never let me go. Then the unimaginable happened. A year can pass, and still I ache for her to be in my arms.

&
nbsp; We haven’t seen each other since that night at Big Apple. Do you still go out sometimes?

  Do I go out? I do, yes, and every time I hope to find her. After that night in April, Mie may have disappeared from my life, she may have been out of sight, but she was never out of mind.

  I often go singing at karaoke boxes to relieve stress. I used to drink a lot, but the next day was always hard. I don’t drink as much anymore.

  In June, I went to Taiwan. I was only there for three days, but it was a good trip. The food was great and I gained weight . . . again.

  I smile as I read this. It reminds me of the letter she sent to me after a recreational trip with her co-workers to Hokkaido. She wrote about all the food she had eaten—fresh crab, salmon roe, sea urchin and so on—worrying that she had gained weight . . . again. Then, she confessed a confused mix of emotions she was feeling about me. I was having the very same muddled, heartsick thoughts.

  There are some things you have probably wanted to know.

  “You’ve got that right, Mie.”

  Actually, I got engaged on my birthday last June. Maybe you didn’t know.

  I hadn’t forgotten that Mie was going to be engaged; she told me as much when we met in April. I just didn’t know she had actually gone through with it. When June came and went without a word from her, I just assumed that she had and that I would never see or hear from her again.

  Next year, on the ninth of January, Tetsu and I will . . .

  The kanji are ones I haven’t yet learned. I count the strokes, nine for the first character, then look it up. Ketsu: “binding, tying”. The second kanji with twelve strokes is read “kon”. I sound out the two kanji together: “Ketsu Kon . . . Ketsukon . . . Jesus Christ, kekkon!”

  Marriage.

  The word comes off the pink stationery like a blow to my gut. Returning to her letter, hands shaking, brow wet with perspiration, I continue to read:

  Next year, on the ninth of January, Tetsu and I will get married.

  "Goddammit, Mie! What do you want from me? You want me to say congratulations? That I'm happy for you?"

  Since February, Tetsu and I talked about a lot of things, and even postponed our engagement. Once we decided though, I became very busy. We often fought about the details of the wedding, but we’ve decided to spend our honeymoon in Jamaica.

  This is pure torture to read. But, like a junkie I can’t stop injecting those words into me however little pleasure I could ever hope to find in them.

  My days of being single are growing short, so I’m trying to meet as many people and go to as many places as I can.

  Last year’s experiences were good memories for me. Meeting you in America and then again here. All of it was like a dream. I really feel it was fate.

  I look up from Mie’s letter. An hour has passed since I began reading it.

  Maybe if you read these words, you’ll feel like we can never meet again, but since I’m still single and since you’re still here, we can always meet.

  Let’s go singing some day. A friend of mine from high school is the mama of a snack in Nakasu. It’s quite fun there, so if you have time . . . MIE

  “If I have time, hah!”

  I’ve had nothing but time for Mie as I waited for her all these months. Exhausted, I lay face down on my futon, the chirping of the cicada rising up like the start of a downpour.

  2

  On the second day of Bon, I wake up around noon, my sleep filled with the most vivid of dreams. In one, Mie is crying in my arms and apologizing. I tell her not to worry, everything will be fine. When I kiss her soft lips, they are salty from the tears she has been shedding. In another dream, I am having sex with Urara. The doorbell rings. We ignore it at first. It rings again and again. I get up, walk to the door and I open it. Mie is standing there cradling a small round lantern in her arms. I tell her to go away and leave me alone, but she doesn’t budge. There’s something she wants to say. I try to close the door, but she puts her body in the way. Urara then comes to the door, naked body glistening with sweat. She tells Mie to shove off. Mie puts the lantern down and I can see now that Mie’s nine months pregnant. She looks ready to burst. She clomps down the stairs, her heavy steps echo up the stairwell: clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp.

  I turn towards Urara, who now looks and sounds like Reina with all her fierce sexuality. With anger in her voice, Reina says, “Peador, I can’t believe what a pushover you are to lose your heart to a cunt like that.” I want to tell Reina to go fuck herself, but I don’t. I follow her back to bed and have sex, the sound of Mie’s steps still going clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp as the headboard of the bed we are fucking in bangs in rhythm against the wall, thunk, thunk, thunk.

  Later in the afternoon, I take a long walk. The streets are quiet, hardly a soul to be seen. On the way to Tôjin Machi, I pass my office. The windows are dark and lifeless. The thought of having to return to work in a few days time fills me with such a dread that I come to the conclusion there’s only one thing for me to do about it.

  Continuing forward, I come across a Buddhist priest, dressed in a brown kimono with juzu prayer beads hanging from his wrist. He bows deeply, reverently before a home, mumbling softly. There is a large white lantern at the entrance of the house, much like the lantern hanging before the gate of my apartment building, only with a different family crest. Someone in that family has died during the past year. The priest straightens up, gives a final blessing, and turns away from the house with a hiccup. His face is red; he reeks of whiskey.

  There is a calm solemnity as I walk through Tôjin Machi. All the shops in the arcade have been closed up for the Bon, some with small mounds of salt before them to ward off evil spirits. The cemeteries, too, are deserted. The simple flower arrangements of reddish orange Chinese lantern flowers and chrysanthemums that were put out only yesterday are already beginning to wilt. The smell of incense lingers before the charnel houses. Above the gray tombstones, red dragonflies dart about with the determined recklessness of kamikazes.

  From there, I head towards Ôhori Park, which is also quiet despite today being a Saturday. The occasional young family strolls together around the large pond, but there aren’t any of the usual couples on dates or groups of high school students lounging about. A boy fishes alone right next to a sign that declares “No Fishing!” A mother and her teenage daughter walk their Golden Retriever. I imagine the poor dog is probably cooped up most of the day in their small condominium. It kills me. People will tell you that they are animal lovers, only to lock their poor pets up in cages . . . But, that’s neither here nor there.

  The daughter has an adorable sweetness to her, so different from her mother who like so many housewives here wears a tired indifference on her face. Does she remember what it was like to be adored? The daughter, with her hair done up playfully in pigtails, reminds me of Urara. It’s only now that I realize I haven’t yet called her as I promised. What an arse she must think I am.

  “Hontô-ni gomen nasai, Urara.” God, I am getting tired of always having to apologize to women. “I will call you. Just let me take care of this one last thing first.”

  Since I’m already half way there, I walk to Gokoku Shrine, the shrine that impressed me so deeply back in April when all I had to distract me from myself were long aimless walks. It’s been months since I was last there, and as the Bon is a Buddhist festival rather than a Shintô one, I don’t expect much of the visit. But, boy, am I ever wrong!

  At the entrance of the shrine, near the towering wooden torii gate is a sign announcing the start of a “festival” held for the spirits of the dead called the Mitama Matsuri. The road passing below the torii cuts through the thick woods leads me to the shrine. As I continue in, a second set of torii gates come into view. Behind them is an amazing sight that stops me in my tracks. On the broad lawns that stretch from this second torii all the way to the golden shinden where the faithful pray and Shintô rites are held, an area nearly the size of a football pitch, there are tens of thousands o
f rectangular lanterns hung in rows, eight feet high and a hundred or more yards deep, forming a dozen or so walls of soft light.

  Entering one of these illuminated corridors, I see that all of the lanterns have been hand painted and signed. This being Japan, some of the boxy lanterns are of course illustrated with anime like characters; others have more traditional and somber drawings of seasonal flowers or calligraphy.

  Gokoku Jinja is, as I’ve mentioned before, a shrine dedicated to those who lost their lives defending their country in past wars. Not only the disgraced leaders who committed seppuku and the kamikazes who tried to crash their burning planes into the ships of the Allied forces, but also those who died when incendiary bombs rained down on their cities are memorialized here. On the 19th of June 1945, a quarter of Fukuoka, a city then the size of Rochester, New York was destroyed and more than nine hundred people were killed. Those thousands upon thousands of lanterns lit up like fireflies in the growing dusk are the most beautiful yet sobering reminder of loved ones lost. I can’t help be overcome with a deep sense of awe just walking among them. So much pain and grief and all for nothing.

  3

  I don’t know what I was thinking back in April. I seldom do. The past is more of an embarrassment than something to recall with fondness; the recent past, particularly so.

  On that early spring evening, I put on my best attire, hoping that I might be able to impress Mie. Now, I can barely remember why I even bothered. Tonight, I spray a bit of cologne on myself rather than shower, and get dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. The Japanese might say I look like an American. Well, hell, that’s what I am, after all.