The Temporal (2 page)

Tokyo, Japan
 

Sam left the building feeling great—better than he had in weeks. His new boss was suitably impressed with his résumé and apparent work ethic. His soon-to-be coworkers—most younger than he by a decade—were pleasant and the office coffee was good and strong. He was now officially an English teacher in Japan.

Slim, but not skinny, Sam Williams
had always been full of the kind of hope that would make a pessimist uneasy. He was a natural Pollyanna who understood that even the worst circumstances often had hidden, but truly redeeming qualities. He was able to glean the good from any bad situation. Always. That is, until recent events changed all that...

Sam had landed at Narita airport the previous day. He
’d had time to shave, shower, and slip into a fitful night’s rest after the long flight. He had nicked himself shaving and had a difficult time getting comfortable on the hard mattress in the tiny hotel room his school had reserved. All these things wouldn’t have fazed the happy-go-lucky Sam Williams of a few months ago. But he had made it to Tokyo. At least there was that much.

In his mid-thirties and bookish, he could turn a banal conversation about sports into a philosophical brawl
and he often did with this friends. His friends... Recently divorced, his wife left him for a friend, a friend he had introduced to her. His other friends, spineless as they were, tried to play Switzerland. In a crushing moment, Sam came to realize that he had no true friends or anchors back home. With the choice of trying to hang on to the past or create a new future, he decided to let go, get out of the country, and start over as a wiser and more careful man.

But h
e wasn’t the adventurous type, preferring instead the quiet—where evenings were spent with a glass of wine and an old novel to intoxicate. Yet here he was sober and on the outset of what rightly could be called a bold adventure: moving to live in a foreign country without so much as an acquaintance. The excitement of the idea and the desire to run away from the past kept any fear of the grand unknown at bay.

He had applied for teaching positions at a dozen English conversation schools throughout Asia. His first bite was in Japan. He
’d had the urge to accept it immediately. But he carefully researched the school online and even contacted a teacher who had previously worked there. After a few questions by email with that teacher and the school secretary, he felt confident in his decision. Japan was, after all, a logical choice; his parents were military and he had lived there as a child. His Japanese was far from fluent, but he knew his
tofu
from his
miso
.

When he had entered the building earlier to meet his new boss, it had been sunny, hot, and humid
—typical for an August in Japan; but opening the door to leave, he saw a sudden avalanche of water plunging to the earth from a sunless sky—also typical. He looked through the pouring rain to the mid-town Tokyo street in front of him. It could have been one of a million streets in any large Japanese city. Telephone and power lines hung low like vines on concrete trees swayed by a harsh wind and pelted by the nearly horizontal rain. The erratic weather perfectly matched his recent manic change of moods. He smiled. In it, he felt, he had found a comfortable camaraderie.

While still standing in the doorway
and several feet from the downpour, a cool, wet mist slapped his face waking him from any possible remnant of slumber or jet lag. He dropped the smile and pulled his arms up into his chest.

The English conversation school happened to share an awning with a corner convenience store. As Sam entered, a blast of cold air from a vent made him shiver.
He eyed a display of a dozen or so umbrellas on sale for five hundred yen. He grabbed one and walked directly to the clerk. It was a cheap, poorly made umbrella; one of the tips of the ribs had already broken off. He noticed that fact just as he was handing the clerk a big five-hundred yen coin. Had he been in the States, he probably would have demanded a replacement, but his mood was affected by the rain and his new surroundings.

“
Arigatou
,” he said and left the store in search of a taxi.

Tokyo seemed quieter and smaller than his memory or media
-shaped imagination had led him to believe. But it was the rain keeping people inside or hurrying them by on the sidewalks. The rain made things seem small and distant, he thought.

With the umbrella hoisted above his head, he stepped into the downpour and
considered waiting it out in the next door—and ever present—McDonald’s. He shook his head and hailed a cab instead.

Confirming his theory, he instantly felt smaller and...
wet. The umbrella was barely wide enough for his broad shoulders; the far ends of Sam’s suit coat were soaked before even getting to the taxi.

Rushing to avoid the rain, he forgot that Japanese cabs have automatic doors. Even though his leg was smarting from the impact, he apologized
profusely to the cab driver with a series of stunted, quick bows. The driver just nodded and held up his right hand for a few seconds, never looking back or even making eye contact in the mirror.

“
Hotel Washington
made onegaishimasu
.” Without a word audible to Sam, the robot-like driver cut the wheel and the cab was swallowed by the stream of traffic. Sam hoped the slight wiggling of the driver’s unusually large left ear indicated his request was understood.

The windshield wipers whooshing back and forth, up and down were like a great maestro passionately conducting a symphony in perfect time. Occasionally, the orchestra seemed to lag behind the unflappable conductor
—even still, it was a melodious sound.

The rain pelting the roof was the percussion; the engine, only audible during acceleration, was the string section building up to a crescendo and then quiet again as a supportive element in the background; there were of course horns and other street noises adding to the
music. The wipers continued whooshing with a constant rhythm.

★

It had been just a few months ago in April, he reminisced, when he took his wife to New York City. A few days of vacation leave and a long weekend made for nearly a week of first class flights and first class sights.

It had been their third wedding anniversary and he had especially surprised her with tickets for the opera at the Met with orchestra premium seating. The opera was Madama Butterfly
—he had learned on their first date that it was the one opera she had always wanted to see. It had been a complete surprise. At the time, he congratulated himself for pulling it off so flawlessly.

There was one moment in particular that came to mind. On stage, the young geisha Chocho-san renounced all for the American Pinkerton
’s love and, as a result, was renounced by all as well. Pinkerton deceitfully comforted her tears with “sweetheart, sweetheart, do not weep” even as his thoughts were on his return to America to marry another.

It was at that moment that Sam noticed her right hand wiping a tear from her cheek. He had been startled to see his stoic wife so moved. Perhaps it was the music
—he had thought—or the underlying emotions bubbling to the surface that are always inherent to anniversaries.

But she was seeing him then...

★

It ended as quickly as it had started. There was no applause. The windshield wipers took one last
bow before retiring off stage. The rain was over.

Moments later, the driver
cut hard across two lanes of rain-swept asphalt and came to a stop inches from the curb. The abrupt arrival snapped Sam’s attention forward. A dozen feet ahead, he saw a large blue awning with the English lettering “WASHINGTON HOTEL” in bold white. Looking to his right and up as far as his window allowed, Sam saw nothing but building—the hotel was at least ten stories high.

The driver
mumbled something in Japanese and crooked his meter so Sam could see the fare. The bored look on the driver’s face from the reflection in the rear view mirror suggested what he meant was “Pay me and get out.”

Sam noticed the pinky on the man
’s held-out left hand was missing a notch. This was obvious even with the ubiquitous white gloves all Japanese taxi drivers wore.

Yakuza
gangster—hopefully ex-yakuza
.

Sam repressed the urge to reach over and lift the man’s shirt.
Shortened fingers and tattoos are the two tell-tale signs that the person belongs to a Japanese gangster family.

Sam
handed a few thousand yen notes to the driver, who easily accepted the bills even with only four-and-a-half digits. Exiting the cab, Sam was careful to avoid a large puddle directly at his feet.
No doubt the yakuza chose that spot to stop on purpose.

He spent the rest of the evening drying in the hotel
’s bar and later in his room watching Japanese television. There was a slap-stick do anything for fame show on that made him laugh despite his melancholy and the language gap.

Sam didn
’t sleep well that night. He chalked it up to jet lag—had to be the jet lag.

Sam’s new job would begin later in the month. This gave him time to find an apartment and, of course, time to explore Japan. The hotel concierge helped him order
shinkansen
—bullet train—tickets to Osaka, Kyoto, and Hiroshima. The return trip would be a scenic route back through the Hokuriku area in central Japan.

It was August, the time of the Obon festival when everyone traveled, the concierge warned. Sam was fine with that. He wasn
’t in a particular hurry and thought it therapeutic to be around crowds of unfamiliar distractions.

The next morning at the station, with a little help from a kind and elderly gentleman and a kid eager to practice his English, he found the correct train and waited in a line that led him directly to his seat.

The train was packed with at least forty passengers in his car. With each stop, some got off, some got on. An even exchange, more or less. Sam just focused forward on the salt-and-pepper—mostly salt—hair of the passenger in front of him and the crinkly paper bib it rested on.

Sam
moved his eyes down. He snickered when he read the English written on the emergency exit chart below the bib. It read, “There are no exits.” Working through it, Sam saw the Japanese added the all-important “in this car” to its translation.

In the train, his mind
continued to wander aimlessly in search of an anchor. At times it seemed he didn’t have the strength to stop it from latching on to his wife—his ex-wife. He had a hard time accepting that simple change of title.

The announcement music began, snapping him back to reality. A tinny, speaker-tainted voice announced the next stop in Japanese.

Two elementary school girls giggled at seeing “Fuji-san” for the first time. Sam closed his eyes and was back in his childhood. He and his classmates had climbed that active volcano several times.

Living in Shizuoka
Prefecture, it was his school’s yearly summer field trip. Well, the bus would drive them up to level four and they would hike to level five. This is how they “climbed” Mt. Fuji. Still, even this short hike was enough to exhaust the young Sam. The air was thin and with every step, it became thinner.

Thoughts of his classmate
’s laughter and the tossing of volcanic rock at the crows gave way to fleeting images of recent events mixed with absurd abstract notions that seem so sensible to a half-asleep mind. This continued until the announcement music brought him back to the train and Osaka was just ahead.

He got off and did the touristy stuff, not really sure about his direction. He came across and boarded an English tour bus. He heard all about Osaka Castle and that big crab in mid-town Osaka. But his mind kept wandering
Stateside. Self-pity engulfed his thoughts. Nothing could penetrate this shroud of darkness, it seemed—not even the sharp pincers of that giant crab.

A day or two later, he boarded a train to get to Kyoto and found a hotel for the night. After that, it was Hiroshima, but it was no matter. His mind was ever sinking, and his spirit was crushed
under the weight of failure and betrayal. No change of scenery reciprocated a change of mind. But onward he went.

Hokuriku was different. He took local trains stopping
at every minor town. A businessman in his forties sat next to him all the way through Fukui Prefecture. Unusually bubbly and eager to strike up a conversation with a foreigner, the man provided a welcome distraction from Sam’s melancholy. The man had been on a week-long business trip; a week away from his family. The businessman stepped off at Eiheiji in northern Fukui leaving Sam to contemplate the meaning of the word “family.”

In short order, Sam got off the train at Kanazawa in Ishikawa
Prefecture. This August morning in Japan was like any other: humid with no healing breeze. He found an information desk at the station and asked for an English guidebook to the sights around Ishikawa.

He had been here once before. His parents took him to Kenrokuen
—one of the three great gardens of Japan, he was told. As a child he glossed over the controlled natural beauty of the garden. At thirty-five, he would have another look.

A young girl, surely on her first summer job, took his money and handed him his ticket
and a booklet. It had a full color photo of the park in the winter just as he had remembered it. The snow covered rock gardens, stone bridge, and roped trees he saw as a child instructed him how beauty—and by extension, love—needed to be restrained and cultivated. But it was now a hot, eternal summer and the trees were left naked and free. This led his thoughts back to his wife; had he been too controlling or not enough? He knew the trees were trying to teach him something, but he wasn’t sure what it was.

Following the instructions on the tourist guide, he took a bus to Noto Peninsula. Noto boldly
sticks out the top of Ishikawa Prefecture into the Sea of Japan. Sam wanted to be bold.

They stopped at a small building that served as a bus stop. The sounds and smell of an unseen beach were strong and nearby
. He could even taste the salty water in the air.

The Japanese characters on a paper pinned to a board caught his eye. He started to ask someone what it meant, but thought it better to leave the mystery intact for now. He began jotting down a rough representation of the kanji to look up later.

He only copied a single character when a clock chimed and distracted him. He heard it ring one, two, three... He knew it had to be ten o’clock, but he continued counting anyway... six, seven, eight...

Somewhere between nine and ten, time stopped. The earth, a hungry lion, groaned. There seemed to be a pause, a preamble to the inevitable, like the moment after an orchestra tunes but before the performance begins
—an overwhelming silence.

In a moment seemingly outside time, he relived his birth. He didn
’t have time to think of the oddity of it. In fact, it seemed there was no time involved. It was more of a holistic feeling; not a thought or memory, but something he just understood instinctively. He experienced his mother’s mixture of extreme pain and joy, seemingly opposite feelings in perfect harmony.

Then the rubber band snapped.

All the pent-up energy imploded inside him. Time had no hold on him. Sam, for that one moment, seemed to float outside his body; see all things, hear all things. His senses were heightened and time slowed, if it existed at all. A terrible sound; of trumpets; a thousand percussion; brass instruments; simultaneously striking a crescendo of vastly discorded notes. The sound waves were even visible to Sam’s eyes as they blasted him with extraordinary force into a newly formed cavity. The building next to him collapsed and showered him with debris and large chunks of earth.