A Woman's Nails (27 page)

I was forced into a corner, and the only way out was to accept that the two of us could never be anything more
than casual friends. For Tatami’
s benefit, I ended up pretending to search within myself the strength to acquiesce, and then feigned disappointment. It was the least I could do.

When she finally hung up, two goddamn hour
s later, I realized that I hadn’
t managed to communicate a genuine and honest thought to her. So, I tried again. I sat down and wrote in the simplest, unambiguous way that my orig
inal desire to ‘just be friends’
had meant precisely that and nothing more, that she had been mistaken in thinking I had been inte
rested in her in any other way.

A day later, she replied in kind with an apologetic lett
er promising me that she would “
try he
r best”
to
be a good friend to me. I didn’
t know if I should
be
happy or not.

7

I didn’
t want the other members at the
Budôkan
to think of me as a
mikka bôzu
, that is
a-three day monk
, which is what they called quitters here, but of all the martial arts I could have ended up doing,
k
yûdô
must have been the worst. Being pushed around by big boys in diapers
in the
sumô
ring
would have been a vastly more entertaining.

My training progressed with unnervingly small baby steps with each visit to the
dôjô
.
During the first several lessons, I was not allowed to even touch a bow. Instead, I was made to practice how to step properly into and then walk within the staging area. Oh yes, and how to bow reverently before the goddamn
kamidana
.

After weeks of mincing effeminately, I was allowed to move on to the next stage which involved going through the elaborate ritual of holding the bow, threading the nock with the bow string, aiming and releasing the arrow. Problem was, I had neither bow nor arrow and was asked, rather, to rely on my fertile imagination. Several days of this humiliation were followed by at last the opportunity to hold a bow and practice releasing imaginary arrows at an imaginary target. After the hour-long practice, I would have tea with my imaginary friends.

In the meantime, Tatami still had reservations about dating me, so we ended up using our mutual studies as a ruse to meet regularl
y. Not at my place, of course—that was unthinkable—b
ut, at coffee shops or in the
Mister Donut
near the park. Though I couldn’
t have been
happier with this arrangement—I
n
eeded more friends like her who’
d patiently listen to me as I bu
tchered the Japanese language—T
atami continued to fret about her inability to be
there
the way she had convinced herself I wanted her to be and worried
that she was wasting my time.

I couldn’
t understand what Tatami was carrying on about half the
time. And, to be honest, I didn’
t really care. I just figured she would eventually come to her senses and accept our relationship free of any troubling nuances. In the meantime, I fell into an odd habit of encouraging and assuring Tatami that I appreciated her friendship, however constrained, exactly as it was. And each time when the poor girl faltered, I would r
aise her up, by reminding her, “
I need your friendship, yo
ur companionship, and your help.”
But you know, the funny thing is the more I told her this, the more I started believing it myself.

8

One rainy afternoon we went to a wonderful coffee shop near the park. Like many of the better restaurants and bars in the city, you could easy mis
s this coffee shop if you weren’
t led by the hand and p
ushed through the door.

I fell in love with the place as soon as I entered. There was a long counter covered with black straw mats, running the length of the narrow coffee shop. The interior walls were made of dark mud with specks of straw and the wall behind the counter was made with Japanese roof tiles with water trickling down through them.

“I love this place,”
I enthused as I look
ed over the hand-written menu. “
Not crazy a
bout the prices, though. Ouch!”

“
Do you have cof
fee shops like this in America?”

“Ha ha . . . No.”

“No?”

“No. For one, I don’t think you’d find many Americans who’
re as fussy about details as you Japanese are, or Americans capable of appreciating the attention pai
d such details. And, two, there’
d be a riot when the
y saw how much the coffee cost.”

“Oh, is this expensive?”

“
My dea
r Tatami, eight bucks a cup ain’t what you’d call cheap.”

Speaking of “three-day monks”
, Tatami had worked a sum total of two days her entire life.
She had entered a major
Japanese
company upon graduating
from college
but was so disgu
sted with the men in her office that she quit.
There was no way she could possibly relate about money. I ordered a
caffé con frecce
, a kind of Vienna coffee made with brandy. It was excellent, and, well, at twelve bucks a pop,
it damn well better have been.

Though we usually spent our afternoons together chatting, we actually did get down to studying from time to time. On this particular day, Tatami had brought a pile of assignments from the translation school she was a
lso attending every week, and I’
d taken my
k
anji
drill book and several grammar worksheets along that I needed to prepare before my next lesson at the YWCA.

As I scribbled down
k
anji
in the drill book, Tatami worked on her homework, occasionally interrupting me to ask what this word or that word meant or whether her choice of words was correct, and so on.

When she wanted to know what “hard-of-hearing”
meant, I asked her whether her grandparen
ts were still alive. They weren’
t, she answered
,
and reached for her
Genius
English-Japanese dictionary. It was the size of a honey-roasted ham. I, too, had brought my set of Takahashi Pocket dictionaries. A bit of a misnomer as so many things are in Japan, the set was so large that the only pockets they could have possibly fit in were
those
of the pants of a rodeo clown
.

Did she have any elderly
aunts and uncles? Yes, but she’
d go on to tell me that they all could hear fine. Then, I asked if she knew what
‘
deaf
’ meant. She did. “Right, ‘hard-of-hearing’ is when you’re not quite deaf, but you’re getting there.”
She said she thought she understood, but continued looking
up the entry
in her honey-roasted ham
all the same
.

“
Atta. atta!
Hard-of-hearing is
mimi ga tôi
in J
apanese.”

“I think I’ve heard that before. ‘
With distant ears
’.”

“
C
an you also say ‘hard-of-seeing’?”

“Nah, I don't think you’ll find are any other ‘hard-of-somethings’ in your dictionary.”

“Hmm,”
she said looking at t
he entries in her dictionary. “
A hard nut to crack;
hard-of-hearing; hard-on . . .
Oh dear
!”

When I noticed how red Tatami’
s face had become, I almost lost it, but then it dawned on me that this may have been the closest the
o-jô-sa
n
had ever gotten to an actual erection. Had I laughed, she would have scurried out of the coffee shop tormented with shame.

The dictionary, I discovered that afternoon, was a minefield of sorts that needed to be trod with care. If
you ran in carelessly after a “hung jury”
as Tata
mi also did that afternoon, you’
d step on the
explosively lascivious phrase “hung like a horse”. “Cunning” is never far from “cunnilingus”, a “fellow” always chases after “fellatio”, and “fuchsia” is colored by the word “fuck”
.

When it was getting time for me to return to work, I settled the bill, which left
me about fifty dollars poorer.

“
Sheesh! Remind me the next time
to only have one cup of coffee.”

“I’m awfully sorry about that.”

“Ah, don’t be. It’s a great place, Tatami. I’m really glad we came. Thanks.”

“Here,”
she said holding some
bi
lls out. “Please. I insist.”

“It’s okay, Tatami. It’s my treat.”

“But, I insist.”

“So do I.”

“But I feel bad.”

“
Tell you what, Tatami, you get
the bill the next time we meet.”

“Okay. But promise you’ll let me pay.”

“I promise.”

“No. P
romise like this,”
she said
,
holding out her pin
ky and hooking it around mine. “
Yakusoku
?”

“
Hai, yakusoku shimasu
,”
I promised.

9

When Tatami called a few days later, I suggested having dinner the f
ollowing Wednesday.

“
Wednesday?
”

“Yes, Wednesday evening,” I said looking at the
s
umô
calendar a student had given me. It featured the Hawaiian
yokozuna
[12]
Ake
bono striking a menacing pose. “
Wed
nesday. Wednesday, the seventh.”

“The seventh?”

“Yes, the seventh of July.”

“
But, I don't think it
's . . .”

“If it’
s t
he time you're worried about, I’
ll finish earlier than usual nex
t Wednesday, so it’s not . . .”

“No, no, it’s not that. It’
s just that .
. . I think that . . . maybe it’
s not such a good idea to meet in the evening. Especially, on the
seventh.”

What was the deal with th
e seventh, I wondered. I knew I’
d have to ask half a dozen people before I could get something resembling a straight answer, so I didn
’
t press the issue with Tatami.

“
But . . . I
can meet you in the afternoon,”
she added brightly.

“
The afternoon, huh? Yeah, that's fine, but I won't have as much time as I usually do. See, the schedu
le's a bit different next week.”

“Oh, I’
m sorry. That was very i
nconsiderate of me . . . I didn’t know you were busy.”

“
Tatami! Give it a rest, will you! I am not busy, but I'll
only have about two hours off.”

“I’
ll tell you what! I'll prepare
bentô
for us.”

So, we meet at half past n
oon at the station, and, like I’ve said, she’
s wearing an odd Alpi
ne dirndl dress of sorts.

“
Guten Tag, Fräulein
,”
I say.

“Pardon?”

“
Wie geht’
s
?”

“Sorry?”

“
Roll out the barre
ls, we'll have a barrel of fun?”

“Peador, are you feeling unwell
?”

“
Yea
h. Sorry, I’m just teasing you.”

“
Moh
! Y
ou
’re always teasing poor Tatami.”

“
I can't help it.
You bring out the worst in me.”