I’d planned to drive my Peugeot across the Tohoku region and return to Tokyo, but just before Iwaki, along Highway 6, my car breathed its last. There was a crack in the fuel line and the car wouldn’t start. I’d done hardly any maintenance on the car up till then, so I couldn’t complain when it gave out. The one lucky thing was that the car gave up the ghost right near a garage where a friendly mechanic worked. It was hard to get parts for an old Peugeot in a place like that, and would take time. Even if we repair it, the mechanic told me, it’s likely something else will soon go wrong. The fan belts looked sketchy, the brake pads were ready to go, and the suspension was nearly shot. “My advice? Put it out of its misery,” he said. The car had been with me for a month and a half on the road, and now had nearly seventy-five thousand miles on the odometer. It was sad to say goodbye to the Peugeot, but I had to leave it behind. It felt like the car had died in my stead.
To thank him for disposing of the car for me, I gave the mechanic my tent, sleeping bag, and camping equipment. I made one last sketch of the Peugeot, and then, shouldering my gym bag, boarded the Joban Line and went back to Tokyo. From the station I called Masahiko Amada and explained my situation. My marriage fell apart and I went on a trip for a while, I told him, but now I’m back in Tokyo. Do you know of any place I could stay? I asked.
I do know of a good place, he said. It’s the house my father lived in for a long time by himself. He’s in a nursing home in Izu Kogen, and the house has been unoccupied for a time. It’s furnished and has everything you’d need, so you don’t have to get anything. It’s not exactly a convenient location, but the phone works. If that sounds good, you should try it out.
That’s perfect, I told him. I couldn’t have asked for more.
And so my new life, in a new place, began.
3
JUST A PHYSICAL REFLECTION
A few days after I’d settled into my new mountaintop house outside Odawara, I got in touch with my wife. I had to call five times before I finally got through. Her job always kept her busy, and apparently she was still getting home late. Or maybe she was with someone. Not that that was my business anymore.
“Where are you now?” Yuzu asked me.
“I’ve moved into the Amadas’ house in Odawara,” I said. Briefly I explained how I came to live there.
“I called your cell phone many times,” Yuzu said.
“I don’t have the cell phone anymore,” I said. That phone might have washed into the Japan Sea by then. “I’m calling because I’d like to go pick up the rest of my things. Does that work for you?”
“You still have the key?”
“I do,” I said. I’d considered tossing the key into the river, too, but thought better of it since she might want it back. “But you don’t mind if I go into the apartment when you’re not there?”
“It’s your house too. So of course it’s okay,” she said. “But where have you been all this time?”
Traveling, I told her. I told her how I’d been driving alone, going from one cold place to the next. How the car had finally given out.
“But you’re okay, right?”
“I’m alive,” I said. “The car was the one that died.”
Yuzu was silent for a while. And then she spoke. “I had a dream the other day with you in it.”
I didn’t ask what kind of dream. I didn’t really care to know about me appearing in her dream. She didn’t say any more about it.
“I’ll leave the key when I go,” I said.
“Either way’s fine with me. Just do what you like.”
“I’ll put it in your mailbox when I leave,” I said.
There was a short pause before she spoke.
“Do you remember how you sketched my face on our first date?”
“I do.”
“I take it out sometimes and look at it. It’s really well done. I feel like I’m looking at my real self.”
“Your real self?”
“Right.”
“But don’t you see your face every morning in the mirror?”
“That’s different,” Yuzu said. “My self in the mirror is just a physical reflection.”
After I hung up I went to the bathroom and looked at my face in the mirror. I hadn’t looked at myself straight on like that for ages. My self in the mirror is just a physical reflection, she’d said. But to me my face in the mirror looked like a virtual fragment of my self that had been split in two. The self there was the one I hadn’t chosen. It wasn’t even a physical reflection.
* * *
—
In the afternoon two days later I drove my Corolla station wagon to the apartment in Hiroo, and gathered my possessions. It had been raining since morning that day, too. The underground parking lot beneath the building had its usual rainy-day odor.
I took the elevator upstairs and unlocked the door, and when I went inside for the first time in nearly two months I felt like an intruder. I’d lived there almost six years and knew every inch of the place. But I no longer was part of this scene. Dishes were stacked up in the kitchen, all dishes she had used. Laundry was drying in the bathroom, all her clothes. Inside the fridge it was all food I’d never seen before. Most were ready-made food. The milk and orange juice were different brands from what I bought. The freezer was packed with frozen food. I never bought frozen food. A lot of changes in the two months I’d been away.
I was struck by a strong urge to wash the dishes stacked up in the sink, bring in the laundry drying and fold it (and iron it if I could), and neatly rearrange the food in the fridge. But I did none of this. This was someone else’s house now. I shouldn’t poke my nose in where I didn’t belong.
My painting materials were the bulkiest possessions I had. I tossed my easel, canvas, brushes, and paints into a large cardboard box. Then turned to my clothes. I’ve never been one to need a lot of clothes. I don’t mind wearing the same clothes all the time. I don’t own a suit or necktie. Other than a thick winter coat, it all fit into one suitcase.
A few books I hadn’t read yet, and about a dozen CDs. My favorite coffee cup. Swimsuit, and goggles, and swim cap. That was about all I felt I needed. Even those I could get along without if need be.
In the bathroom my toothbrush and shaving kit were still there, as well as my lotion, sunscreen, and hair tonic. An unopened box of condoms, too. But I didn’t feel like taking all that miscellaneous stuff to my new place. She could just get rid of it.
I packed my belongings in the trunk of the car, went back to the kitchen, and boiled water in the kettle. I made tea with a tea bag, and sat at the table and drank it. I figured she wouldn’t mind. The room was perfectly still. The silence lent a faint weight to the air. As though I were sitting alone, at the bottom of the sea.
All told, I was there by myself in the apartment for about a half hour. No one came to visit, and the phone didn’t ring. The thermostat on the fridge turned off once, then turned back on once. In the midst of the silence I perked up my ears, probing what I sensed in the apartment, as if measuring the depths of the ocean with a sinker. No matter how you looked at it, it was an apartment occupied by a woman living alone. Someone busy at work who had next to no time to do any housework. Someone who took care of any errands on the weekends when she had free time. A quick visual sweep of the place showed that everything there was hers. No evidence of anyone else (hardly any evidence of me anymore, either). No man was stopping by here. That’s the impression I got. They must have seen each other elsewhere.
I can’t explain it well, but while I was in the apartment I felt like I was being watched. Like someone was observing me through a hidden camera. But that couldn’t be. My wife is a major klutz when it comes to equipment. She can’t even change the batteries in a remote control. No way could she do something as clever as setting up and operating a surveillance camera. It was just me, on edge.
Even so, while I was in the apartment I acted as if every single action of mine was being recorded. I did nothing extra, nothing untoward. I didn’t open Yuzu’s desk drawer to see what was inside. I knew that in the back of one of the drawers of her wardrobe, where she had her stockings, she kept a small diary and some important letters, but I didn’t touch them. I knew the password for her laptop (assuming she hadn’t changed it), but didn’t even open it. None of this had anything to do with me anymore. I washed the cup I’d drunk tea in, dried it with a cloth, put it back on the shelf, and turned off the lights. I went over to the window and gazed at the falling rain for a while. The orangish Tokyo Tower loomed up faintly in the distance. Then I dropped the key in the mailbox and drove back to Odawara. The trip was only an hour and a half, but it felt like I’d taken a day trip to a far-off foreign land.
* * *
—