The Earthquake Bird (11 page)

I sat on the ground, among swollen pink azaleas, and shut my eyes while the earth tilted and swayed like the deck of a ship.
I wanted Teiji so badly, to touch his skin, but I would never, ever see him again. When I threw up, a couple of hours later,
I blamed it not on alcohol but on seasickness.

T
he noodle shop was crowded. As always, most of the customers were men. Businessmen, young and old, students. There were just
a few women, sitting in pairs or alone, facing the wall. Through the window I could almost smell the food, the chopped spring
onions, the small pieces of meat, the barley tea. I pushed the door open and entered with Lily close behind. The toe of her
shoe clipped my heel twice as we walked. I wished she would step out beside me but I knew she liked to hide. She’d done the
same thing when we were apartment-hunting, pushing me into the firing line and cowering in my shadow. I searched for Teiji’s
face but could not see him. His uncle nodded at me from behind the counter. It wasn’t a look of open hostility but I knew
he was suspicious. He always looked straight into my eyes for a couple of seconds then averted his stare to some stain on
the floor, or the back of a chair. I thought it was a sad look, but I didn’t know why he should be sad. I wondered what he
had thought of Sachi, the strange actress.

I said, “Konnichiwa,” in a cheery voice and led Lily past him to the only empty table. Once we were seated I realized that
I had my back to the kitchen. This was no good because I would not be able to look out for Teiji, to thrill at a glimpse of
his muscles as he wiped a surface or opened a cupboard before seeing me and coming to join us. I was about to ask Lily to
change places but before my mouth was open I sensed Teiji’s presence close behind me. It was a kind of warmth, a pull, and
I leaned back in my chair to let my head touch his chest, like one magnet snapping onto another. Lily looked up, beyond my
head and back at me. I couldn’t tell what she thought of him, though she seemed a little shy. She waited for me to speak.
Lily was the first friend I’d introduced to Teiji. It gave me an odd feeling of sharing a deeply personal secret. I confess,
I wanted her to like him.

“This is Teiji,” I said, still not looking.

“’Ello.”

Teiji greeted her, brushed my hair with his fingertips. He went back into the kitchen, promising to join us in a moment.

“He’s very cute,” Lily whispered with an encouraging nod. Cute. It was close to insulting but she intended it as a compliment
so I forgave her. I wanted Lily to like Teiji but I had not expected her to understand him. Teiji’s world was too distant
from hers.

He appeared again with two hot bowls of noodles and placed them on the table. His camera was around his neck, hanging by its
old leather strap. I was sure it hadn’t been there when he stood behind me. I plucked disposable chopsticks from the pot on
the table but Teiji put his hand around mine and steered it back. He disappeared, then came back with lacquer chopsticks that,
I guessed, he and his uncle used. Teiji once told me that they ate together most evenings. Sometimes it was midnight before
they were both free to sit at the table, but still one would wait for the other, however hungry he felt. Teiji’s uncle liked
to talk about things he’d noticed during the day, a bird on the windowsill, a customer’s gold tooth. Teiji would listen and
eat.

“Wow. We’re getting the posh treatment.” Lily picked up the chopsticks and peered at them as if they were made of ivory. I
am still finding it difficult to remember Teiji’s words and so I will recount what I believe he may, or must, have said that
day.

“Enjoy your noodles. I’ll come and talk to you when I can but I have to serve these customers first.”

Lily poked the noodles around the bowl. She knew how to hold her chopsticks but not how to grip slippery food. I was glad
because her concentration rendered her silent for at least twenty minutes and so I was allowed to let my thoughts wander while
I slurped from my own bowl. I turned every now and then to see what Teiji was doing. He moved around the shop clearing tables,
wiping them. Although he performed each task efficiently, his thoughts were clearly elsewhere. His eyes were full of something
that was not tables or damp cloths. I hoped it was me but it was hard to tell. I finished my noodles and watched Lily as she
fought her way toward the bottom of her bowl. We were startled by a flash and both turned at the same time. Of course, I should
have known by then. I should have known exactly what it was and not even blinked.

Teiji had captured us in his lens. Snap. He smiled, turned, and went back to clearing tables. He had taken a photograph of
Lily and me together. He gave it to me a couple of weeks later. He’d wrapped it in a piece of carefully folded newspaper.
I kept that too. I read both sides of it again and again to decipher some message of love. On one side was an article about
the recent rise in domestic abuse, on the other were that day’s foreign exchange rates. I could make a link, if I tried, but
I knew none was intended. Still, it had been folded by Teiji’s dextrous hands, for me. I was glad that he hadn’t made a copy
of the photograph for Lily. That meant that it was intended as a picture of me with Lily as an extra, not a picture of the
two of us as equals. I was ashamed of my delight in such a childish triumph, but not enough to make me change that feeling.
Nor was my shame sufficient to lead me to the photography shop and have it copied for Lily, though I knew even then that she
would have liked it. I still have that picture, in a box where I put things that I don’t want to keep but cannot throw away.

It seems to Lucy now that the photograph marks the start of the trouble. I could look at the picture and think, this is the
moment where it went wrong, the point at which it was already too late. Before the shutter clicked. After the shutter clicked.
A split second in between when a seismic shift occurred that could not be felt on the earth’s crust. It would eventually result
in an earthquake so huge that it couldn’t be measured on either the Richter scale or the Japanese earthquake scale. In fact
the photograph shows nothing but Lily and Lucy sitting at a table; it was the taking of the photograph, not the image it stole,
that started the rumbling. And I don’t have a photograph of the photograph being taken. Yet the picture shows what was happening
in the moment it was taken and so it has become a representation of itself. I should have understood this at the time.

But I didn’t. My head was full of Sachi.

Other customers came and left, staying just long enough to have their noodles and pay for them. It was a functional place,
after all. But Lily wanted to talk and we chatted through the afternoon, mostly about her apartment. She was delighted with
her new home and gave me all the credit, as if I’d built it for her with my own hands. She told me of all the little things
she’d bought—a mosquito-killing machine, a rice cooker. I listened but I was not enjoying myself in this uncomfortable clashing
of my life’s zones. I wanted to get Lily out of the shop, but Teiji was there. I couldn’t leave him. My fingertips twitched,
as they do when I’m annoyed, and I kept them pressed hard against the table leg.

At about five o’clock Teiji finished work and suggested we go for a beer together. I willed Lily to refuse, but knew she wouldn’t.
Since meeting Lucy she seemed to have no need for other friends.

“I think Lily wants to get back home.”

“No, no. I’d love to go for a drink. Is there a bar near here?”

Teiji nodded. I was irritated but the only way out would be for me to go home alone. I wanted to be with Teiji so I couldn’t
leave. Teiji seemed happy for Lily to join us. I wondered if he was afraid of being alone with me, scared that I would start
to ask about Sachi again.

We walked out into daylight and Teiji led us to an izakaya, a large bar with long low tables and tatami floors. We slipped
off our shoes and stepped up into the dark room. Several waiters shouted their welcomes to us and one led us to a corner table.
Teiji and I sat at one side, Lily at the other. We ordered large bottles of beer and a bowl of salty green soybeans. When
the food and drink arrived, Lily’s eyes were shining.

“Have you been out much in Tokyo, Lily?” I asked, knowing that she hadn’t.

“Not really. I’m working in the bar almost every afternoon and evening. I don’t like to go out with colleagues all the time
either so… Now I’m living by myself, though, it’s a bit lonely sometimes. Not that I don’t like my apartment or anything,
I love it.” She smiled gratefully at me. “The other people I meet are all teachers, you know. You’ve met some of them, of
course. Bob’s nice. I don’t think we’ve got much in common, though. I mean, you’re a translator, I know, but you’re different.
Maybe it’s because we come from the same place.”

I explained to Teiji, through a tense jaw, that Lily and I were from the same part of the same county. This seemed to interest
him, though he was fast becoming drunk and unfocused, as was Lily. It takes more than a couple of glasses of beer to affect
Lucy and so I drank heartily to catch up with them. Teiji said to Lily, “You don’t seem like other foreigners in Japan.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. I think you weren’t so ready to come here. Perhaps you were happier at home.”

“I wasn’t happy at home, but it’s true, I’m different from the other Westerners I meet. They’re brainier.”

Neither of us refuted the observation, but Teiji stared at her thoughtfully.

“You were a nurse in Britain? That takes skills not many people have.”

“Perhaps.”

“You must be very patient, and very practical.”

“I do try. I don’t always get it right of course. I miss the hospital though, lots.”

“But working in a bar. That’s not so bad, is it? I think it’s a good kind of work. The noodle shop gives me all the time I
need for thinking because my body just gets on with the job by itself.”

“I’m so bad at bar work. I have to concentrate all the time, otherwise I’d be even worse.”

They talked more, but I have no idea where the conversation went next. I was surprised by Teiji. He’d never told me about
his love for mopping floors and washing up. We didn’t discuss such mundane notions. We talked about typhoons, volcanoes, about
the light on a winter morning. Mostly, I think, we didn’t talk. And that was my favorite thing. Not talking. Not feeling the
need to fill up beautiful and valuable silences with unnecessary noise.

Lily was a chatterbox. I’d wanted her to make me ordinary in front of Teiji—talking about everyday things—so he’d forget my
act of treachery. Instead, in taking on Teiji in conversation, she was making him into something ordinary. I didn’t like it—for
me Teiji was made of magic—so I didn’t listen. I settled into thinking about Lily in her white uniform, tending to patients
in a hospital ward. She would have seen deadly illnesses, bloody injuries, grief. From nowhere the seven brothers marched
into my mind with their fishing nets, and then Noah’s final trip to the hospital with his blood-matted curls, though he was
almost dead. The doctors and nurses rushed and fought to save his life. They fought with all their might, but they lost. And
somewhere from the battlefield a nurse was coming to take Lucy away, a beautiful nurse with crinkly eyes.

“Did you ever have to deal with dead children?” The question slipped out.

Teiji stared at me. He looked as if something had stuck in his throat. Lily was unfazed.

“Yes. Dead everything, really. It’s my job. That doesn’t make it easy when a kid dies, but—” She sipped her beer and frowned.

“But?”

“I can’t remember what I was going to say. This beer’s gone right to my head. I’m pissed.”

“Me too.”

If Teiji was alarmed by my question, he soon recovered. He was now laughing. His face was pink from the alcohol. He looked
as if he’d been tickled. I had never seen him even slightly tipsy before and I felt confused. He was relaxed and his smile
was sweet but it was different from the smile I knew. I touched his cheek with the backs of my fingers. His skin was burning.
He took my wrist to keep my hand in place.

“You’re very hot, Teiji.”

“Yes. I have too much to drink and then I boil up. I need air to cool me down again. Let’s go somewhere else for the next
drink. I’d like to sit in the park.”

“Is there a park near here?” Lily practically squealed.

“Not especially near,” Teiji replied, “but it’s nice outside. We can walk.”

Night had fallen while we were in the bar. In Yoyogi Park we sat on plastic bags from a convenience store and stacked cans
of beer around us. We opened packages of small rice crackers with tiny dried fish and spread them on the grass. The lights
from the city twinkled through the high trees. Lily watched and began to sing.

“Sometimes I walk away, when all I really wanna do—”

“You’ve got a nice voice.” My compliment was genuine. Her singing voice was rich and pure, without a trace of the whine she
used when she spoke.

“Thanks—
is love and hold you right. There is just one thing I can say
…”

“This is a perfect summer evening.” I lay back on the grass and let the insects feed on my blood.

“It’s all right. Can’t you see—the downtown lights.”

“Downtown lights,” Teiji murmured. “In every city in the world. I’d like to see London’s downtown lights.”

Lily piped up, “So would I. I’ve only been to London twice and both times I was there in the daytime. But I’ve never seen
city lights like Tokyo’s before. So big and so bright. All those big words everywhere, flashing on and off. What I like best
is when city lights are shining on water, you know, when it’s raining, or if there’s a river in the city. I love that.”

Teiji put his arm around me and with his other hand reached for a beer and snapped it open, handed it to me, kissed the side
of my neck. I thought of Sachi’s neck, long and soft.

“Singing is good,” Teiji announced. “It’s like breathing from a deep place, not your lungs but your spirit. I don’t know any
English songs, though, except the Beatles and I haven’t learned the words to those.”