Bicycle Days (2 page)

On the landing, shoes were neatly lined up against the wall. He tried to untie his high-tops while still standing. The girl laughed at him but clamped her hand over her mouth as soon as he looked at her. A white miniature poodle came running down the short hallway and jumped on him. A short barrel of a woman in a puffed and pleated evening dress came after it, yelling, “Chiko! Chiko!” The dog started chewing Alec’s right foot. Alec was still trying to get his sneakers off.

The pain started just below his knees and went shooting up into his thighs. Alec looked around the low table at his new family. They were all dressed as if they might be going out for an evening at the theater. Exhausted, far away from himself, he sensed that he was smiling and saying small things in Japanese every once in a while. He remembered the many times he had been to Japanese restaurants at home, how he had always liked the idea of sitting at a low table, liked how simple it was.

He took a piece of sushi in his chopsticks, dipped it in soy sauce, and guided it into his mouth. Mrs. Hasegawa had ordered it especially for his arrival. He felt the eyes of the entire family on him as he chewed. Did Alec really like sushi? Yes? Laughter.

He thought he was beginning to understand the rhythm of the conversation, if not the words. Mr. Hasegawa’s speech was unintelligible. Short and slim with a crewcut, he made constant grunting noises that seemed to come from somewhere deep inside him. This was at first confusing, but Alec soon realized that each grunt was a sign of assent. Again and again, he would stop in the middle of a sentence to search for a word, only to see Mr. Hasegawa leaning forward, his hands resting on his thighs. Like a seismologist reading the tremors before a major earthquake, Alec knew then that a grunt was coming, and this
knowledge gave him enough confidence to struggle through the sentence. Then the grunt would actually erupt, accompanied by an audible sigh of relief from everyone at the table, especially Alec.

Yoshi, the eldest of the three children, was talking, mixing in a few words of English with the Japanese. Alec thought this a good sign. The summer before, when he was sixteen, Yoshi had spent a couple of weeks in the States on a group tour. He had seen Michael Jackson in concert. Yukiko, his fifteen-year-old sister, said that she preferred Bruce Springsteen. Hiroshi, twelve, was more interested in professional wrestling. Had Alec heard of Hulk Hogan?

Alec looked at Mrs. Hasegawa sitting across the table from him, not exactly cross-legged. She had brought a plate of sliced apples from the kitchen and was eating one, chewing with a great, sweeping rotation of her jaws. When she finished, she took a toothpick from a small jar on the table and scraped her teeth. Throughout, she never stopped talking.

Alec must eat a lot of beef, she said. And it was surprising that he wasn’t taller—most Americans are so big. She didn’t mean that he was short, but he certainly wasn’t tall. Did he have a girlfriend? What was that? No girlfriend? But he must be so smart and handsome to have graduated from a school like Yale, such a famous university. How could he not have a girlfriend?

Alec shook his head. No one seemed to notice. He ate a slice of apple.

I like American girls, Yoshi said. Especially California girls.

Alec grunted, took a sip of beer.

H
e rolled over and looked at his watch: four-thirty in the morning. He closed his eyes and tried to go back to sleep but knew there was no point. The room glowed from the one window, which looked directly into a neighboring house. For a moment, he didn’t think at all about where he was. It was just a room, nothing else. Alec lay in it and thought of his first summer away at camp, how empty and alone he had felt on his first night there, lying awake on the top level of a bunk bed in a bare, wooden cabin, listening to the breathing of seven other boys his own age. He had not wanted to go away then. He had cried and screamed at his parents. It hadn’t been his decision—not the way it had been later, when he went away to school, or even now, coming here. But the feeling was not so different. This room was not so different.

Alec felt suddenly afraid then, the room seemed so small. He thought he should get some air. Rummaging through his suitcase, he pulled out a blue-and-white-patterned yukata that his
mother had bought for him at Bloomingdale’s. He put it on and slid open the wood-and-paper screen of his room, and then the glass door to the balcony. The air was cool and comfortable, and he stepped into it as though into a hot bath: gingerly at first, then completely, with satisfaction. He breathed deeply. The sky was cloudless, and Tokyo lay sprawled out before him, silent and waiting, offering him his own private viewing.

About an hour later, Alec stood in a closet-size room, his yukata hanging on a hook behind him. He was looking down at a Japanese-style toilet and felt much more naked than he normally would with no clothes on. The toilet was just a porcelain hole in the ground with a single pipe curving out of it and into the wall. There was nothing to indicate the proper mounting procedure. He supposed it was something like a bidet and did not want to be facing the wrong way when the time came to flush. He squatted over it but lost his balance and had to grab on to the pipe for support.

When he had finished, he walked down the stairs, stopping on the third floor. It was still only five-thirty in the morning, and the house was quiet. The bedrooms were open, and he looked in at the black heads of the family resting against the white of their futons and comforters. He stood there for a while, hardly breathing, until the sleeping bodies blurred before his eyes. He blinked and focused on them again. But they seemed no more real or comprehensible to him than they had before, and a sudden wave of loneliness came over him. He turned and walked away from the feeling, down the stairs, and into the bathroom.

The bathroom was damp, covered in tile. Removing his yukata, Alec squatted on a low, plastic seat in front of a faucet, which jutted out from the wall as though it had been placed there by mistake. He filled a plastic bowl with water and dumped it over his head. Next, shampoo and soap. He scrubbed
himself with a cloth that felt like sandpaper against his skin. He finished by dumping another bowl of water over his head. Rinsed and clean, he stood up and rolled back the cover of the small, deep bathtub. A cloud of rising steam hit him in the face. Alec looked at the bathwater, wondering if it was really supposed to be that hot.

He entered the tub left leg first, the heat making him feel as if the skin might peel right off his body. It went like that, one limb at a time, until five minutes later only his head was still above water. He sat back in the tub, knees up, and considered the possibility that he had come to the wrong country.

He sat at the low table, dressed in his new pin-striped suit. Yukiko came in from the kitchen and set down a tray of dishes in front of him. She said good morning without looking at anyone and immediately disappeared. Hiroshi, the youngest, sat to Alec’s right, barely awake, slumped over his food. Alec picked up his bowl in his left hand, ate some rice with dried fish flakes on it. He looked at Hiroshi.

“What time do you usually go to school?” he asked in Japanese.

Hiroshi looked up at him through bleary eyes. “Around eight o’clock.”

“So, how do you like it?” This time Alec smiled.

“It is okay,” Hiroshi said. He didn’t smile back.

Alec gave a mild grunt and ate a few more dried fish flakes. He thought of all the hours he had spent studying Japanese in college. None of it seemed to be of much use in actual conversation.

He tried to concentrate on his food. As he choked down a bowl of raw egg and soy sauce, he noticed that Hiroshi was nibbling at a plate of buttered toast and fried eggs.

“Excuse me,” he said, gesturing toward Hiroshi’s food. “Do you eat this kind of food every day?”

Hiroshi stopped nibbling. “Yes. It is delicious.” He started nibbling again.

“I see. What about this kind of food?” Alec motioned to his own Japanese-style breakfast.

“I do not like it very much.”

Mrs. Hasegawa came bustling in from the kitchen and set down a dish of fried shrimp in front of Alec.

“Please eat,” she said.

“Thank you. It looks delicious,” he said, already full.

She sat down across from him. “Where is your office building?”

“It is in Toranomon. Twenty-two Mori Building.”

“Eh? Toranomon? It is a very good area—the best for business. Your company must be very important. Yes? Eh! Good. You will take the subway to Toranomon like a Japanese. My friend, Yoshimura-san, will go with you today. In twenty minutes.” She held up two fingers. “Do you understand, Alec-san? Twenty minutes.”

Her words had been partly muffled as she chewed a large shrimp taken from his plate, and Alec wasn’t sure he had understood. “I am working at an American company,” he said.

She shook her head until she had finished chewing. “The subway,” she said. “You will ride it to work. Yes?” She began to act out the role of a subway passenger, her arm raised upward and bent at the elbow, her thick body rocking violently back and forth.

“Oh, yes, yes. I see. I am sorry.” The Japanese words collided against each other in his mouth. “I understand. Yes, thank you.”

Yukiko spoke up from the corner where she was finger-combing her bangs in front of a mirror. “Your Japanese is very good. Did you really go to Yale? You are very smart.”

Alec saw Mrs. Hasegawa moving toward him with another platter of shrimp.

“Don’t you like the shrimp?” Mrs. Hasegawa said. “Eat.”

* * *

Alec had never seen so many people. They poured into the subway station, moving rapidly, silently, with purpose. Hundreds and hundreds of Japanese, most of them men in nondescript suits, bought their tickets or simply showed their subway passes and walked through the electronic gates. Painted lines on the platform told them where to stand. Electronic signs indicated a train’s departure from the previous station, while uniformed men with white gloves shouted out the final approach. Everyone stood close together, mopping their foreheads with multicolored handkerchiefs. And they read: newspapers, magazines, novels; violent, erotic comics bound in thick paperback volumes.

And then the next train was there, doors hissing open to unleash another wave of people. Those getting off surged forward, fighting to make it through the doors, almost running directly into the wall of people waiting to board the train. But the white-gloved men were always there to keep order. Directions purred over the loudspeaker in ultrapolite Japanese.

Feeling himself pushed forward by the weight of the crowd behind him, Alec struggled to maintain his position next to Mari Yoshimura, the guide Mrs. Hasegawa had arranged for him. But it was no use. His new briefcase—a graduation present from his father—had suddenly become a hazard, trapped as it was between the bodies of three men who were being shoved to his left. Alec held on to the handle and felt his arm being painfully twisted. Fear held him for an instant before he tore the briefcase free and pressed forward. Luckily his head was slightly above the crowd, so he was able to keep his eyes on Mari—if he lost track of her, he might never get to work, or even back home. He watched her being jostled and shoved by men almost twice her size. Her pale, round face was expressionless, as though nothing were happening at all. But her eyes were anxious, looking at him, and Alec wondered if she regretted
being his guide. He struggled harder, until he was standing next to her.

Then they were in the car, jammed together in the stifling air. Unlike the bus, there was no air-conditioning, only fans spaced just far enough apart to be ineffective. The wave of people stopped for a moment, and Alec tried to create a little space for himself, only to be knocked deeper into the car as the white-gloved attendants made their final push. The doors slid closed, the train jolted into motion.

“You are from New York, Alec-san?” Mari said in excellent English. “I have been there many times with my husband. It is a wonderful city, I think.”

Breaking through the silence of the car, Mari’s voice sounded embarrassingly loud to Alec, and he suppressed a sudden urge to put his finger to his lips. He noticed that people were glaring at her but merely stealing quick glances at him, their mouths compressed into tight lines of disapproval.

The train pulled into another station, the loudspeaker came to life again. People flowed out and back, prodded by the white-gloved men.

And then Alec heard his own voice in the silent car, telling Mari that he liked New York, too, that it was his favorite city. It was an uncomfortable voice, loud and foreign, and it seemed to him somehow tainted with the disapproval of everyone around him. There was no response from Mari, and Alec could only stand dumbly beside her, listening to the muted rattle of the train, because there were no other sounds to listen to. Hundreds of people crammed together, pushing and shoving, reading and sweating, and not a single word. No apologies. No good mornings. As if the mouths of everyone were closed too tightly to ever open again.