A Woman's Nails (44 page)

Back in my apartment, I sift through the usual fliers for
adaruto
vi
deo 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—a
nd, 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 m
e
.

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 woo
den 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 clu
e me in as to how to read them.

“
You must have quite the high
opinion of me, Mie, assuming I’
d b
e 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 ac
cording to their stroke number.

Most of the characters
in Japanese
have two or more ways of
being read
,
depending upon if they stand al
one 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 i
s read "
kô
"
(
ginkô
)
, while in
the word
“
queue
”
, it comes first and is pronounced “
gy
ô
” (
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 w
hat 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 ar
e 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 s
orry
a
bout that
.

“
Hontô-ni g
omen n
asai
,” she wrote. “
I’m really s
orry
. . .
”
The words as I decipher them come off the pa
ge 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,”
s
he 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 bet
ween the present and
Mie’s
final “
sayônara”
, there will always be a lexicon of daily reminders of her in the Japanese vocabul
ary to sneak up on me and say, “
Here I am, Peador! Thought you cou
ld forget about me, didn’t you?”

“
Hontô-ni gomen
n
asai
,”
she is telling me. She is sorry. I remember her hand in mine, short, tanned fingers holding m
y 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.

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 abo
ut all the food she had eaten—f
resh crab, sal
mon roe, sea urchin and so on—w
orrying that she had gained weight . . . again. Then, she confessed a confus
ed mix
of emotions
she was feeling about
me. I was having the very sa
me 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 bir
thday last June. Maybe you didn’
t know.

I hadn’
t forgotten
that
Mie was going to be engaged; she told me as much wh
en we met in April. I just didn’
t know she had actually gone through with it. When June came and went witho
ut a word from her, I
just assumed that she had and that I woul
d 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 we
t 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.

May
be if you read these words, you’
ll feel like we ca
n 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 t
he 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 ha
s 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 an
d 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. Ura
ra 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.