Bicycle Days (15 page)

W
hat Alec remembered most about learning to drive was the blind spot. Three mirrors properly positioned, the car in gear, and, suddenly, a sense of shadow, a feeling that some dangerous element was gaining on him fast and hidden and dark. Don’t turn your head, his father would say, you have to learn to use the mirrors. So he wouldn’t turn his head, knowing all along that his father was wrong, that terrible things were waiting to happen. Things he couldn’t see. He would feel a car behind him somewhere, usually off to the left and a little behind, but the mirrors never showed the truth when he looked at their bright surfaces. In the blank clarity of their frames was the presence of a world unseen and unknown, a world chasing him as he drove with stiff arms and an aching neck, even as he privately mourned its absence.

Perhaps it was crazy, but Tokyo seemed darker after the night he left Masako for good, as if he were learning to drive all over again and had lost parts of the world around him in a blind spot
that had descended without warning. The car was still moving, the mirrors still in place, and most things appeared as they normally would. There was just that one area, filled to overflowing with mirrored nothingness and the sense of shadow all over again.

The feeling seemed to come and go as it pleased, as if it didn’t care what he thought. So he tried not to think about it. That didn’t change things, though. Days continued, and he was often surprised to find himself an active participant in each one. He half wondered who it was going to the office each day, sitting there for hours just so he could return home again. Who it was that had taken to drinking whiskey like the old men in movies. Who it was that could have treated anyone the way he had treated Masako that night, the numbness he had felt looking at his reflection in the mirror, the absence he had seen in it.

T
he rain was heavy, summer-warm even at five-thirty in the morning. Fog rose lethargically from the surface of the bay, hovering and then settling over the fishing boats webbed with netting, over the fish market that hugged the waterfront like an ancient village. The fish sellers paid no attention to the weather. They had mapped out this territory years before and knew their business. The ground between the rows of stalls was paved with cobblestones to facilitate drainage, and tarpaulins were stretched taut above the wooden shelves and crates of fish. Clad in waterproof aprons, the sellers meticulously rearranged their wares, adding more crushed ice, slicing thin strips of sashimi for customers to sample. Around them the rainwater ran in streams down the tarpaulins. It ran between the cobblestones and through newfangled plastic gutters. It made a kind of music as it beat against the canopy of brightly colored umbrellas that progressed purposefully, like a single, living creature, from stall to stall. Beneath this canopy walked a busy crowd of
people, women mostly, the intensity and pitch of their voices rising and falling as they changed from the low murmur of salutation to the polite, determined fierceness of price haggling.

Alec stood beside Nobi at one end of the central row of stalls, taking in the scene. They were both dressed in suits, Nobi’s navy blue with pinstripes, Alec’s solid gray. Their black umbrellas stood out like bruises against the moving background of lilac, green, blue, and red ones.

Alec indicated the entire market with a wave of his hand. “Not many black umbrellas.”

“There are not so many men here,” Nobi explained. “This is mostly a woman’s place. Of course, the fish is caught and sold by men.”

“It’s certainly crowded.” Alec was having second thoughts about being rained on so early in the day. The expedition had been Mrs. Hasegawa’s idea in the first place—she had billed it as “the best fish market in the world.” To Alec it had seemed like a good excuse to call Nobi. Now he wasn’t so sure.

“It is crowded, yes,” Nobi said thoughtfully. “But also we are late: the best time for this market is about four-thirty in the morning. That is because it is now very famous in Tokyo. And so to buy the best fish, you must arrive early. Of course, we are here only to look, yes?” Alec nodded. “Good, because I understand fish only when I eat them.”

They moved with the crowd, lurching now and then on the irregular cobblestones. A metallic clicking was clearly audible above the beating of the rain and the cries of the fish sellers. After a minute, Alec realized that it was caused by the umbrellas bumping against one another, the tips of the spines briefly colliding, tapping out urgent messages in code.

An old woman silently pushed her way in front of them. Her face was so wrinkled that the deep lines themselves appeared more prominent than her nose, eyes, or mouth. She could not have been much above four feet tall, dressed in a blue-and-white kimono tied at her waist with an obi of dark green. Her geta,
traditional wooden sandals, clacked sharply against the wet cobblestones.

Watching her, Nobi said, “Alec, this market is good for old women. They like to come here because it is a safe place. They remember things when they are here. My grandmother often comes here. She would say that this fish market is not so different from the markets in old Tokyo, before the war. Of course, some things have changed. Like that—” Nobi pointed to one of the plastic gutters. “And clothes have changed. But the purpose is still the same. Women come here to buy fish and to discuss the price of that fish. That discussion is very important: you must have energy to get a good price. So it can be like exercise to these women. One morning every week, they come here to push the younger women and buy fish, to have energy and tell stories. Then they go home before the new Tokyo is awake, and again they are safe. It is why I enjoy this market. Its spirit is old.”

They stopped in front of a stall that was less crowded than most. Hanging from the wooden stanchions, lanterns cast white light. Beneath them the fish glistened in their coffins of crushed ice. The seller was a sturdy man with a neatly trimmed mustache and the beginnings of a beard. His faded green cotton pants were rolled up to his knees. A woman wearing a red silk scarf stood beside him, pointing at a fish Alec didn’t recognize. The seller hooked two fingers into the gills of the fish and raised it at arm’s length for inspection. A brief silence fell over the women gathered in front of the stall as they collectively paused to assess the fish. Then, with an expectant nod from the seller, the haggling between him and the woman with the scarf began in earnest. Alec felt a tug on his elbow and reluctantly followed Nobi back out into the rain, which had lightened somewhat.

“The rain is less,” Nobi said.

Alec was looking at the cobblestones, not really listening, trying to get a question out. “Have you talked to Kiyoko recently?”

“Probably you have talked to her more recently than I have,” Nobi said. “At work, perhaps.”

“We don’t talk much at work,” Alec said. “And I haven’t seen her outside of work since that time at your place.”

Nobi didn’t say anything.

“Is she angry with me?”

“I do not know.”

“Wouldn’t she tell you?”

Nobi stopped to peer into a crate filled with enormous live spider crabs. He shrugged as he stood up. “Japanese women and men do not tell many things to each other, Alec. And Kiyoko is a very complicated Japanese woman. It is true she is like a sister to me, but I do not always understand her. Sometimes she can be strange. That is the way things are. In Japan, you should not try to hurry any kind of relationship.”

“What about the advice you gave me when we first met, Nobi? Remember? About how to meet women. That was all about how to hurry relationships.” Alec listened to himself and thought he sounded like a child.

Nobi stiffened visibly. “I think there are some things that you are not seeing. This is different because you know who Kiyoko is. She is not someone you see at a bar. And it is different because I know her. Perhaps that is enough.”

That was the last they talked of it. They walked without speaking for a few minutes. All at once the rain stopped, as though a tap had been turned off. The brightly colored umbrellas were closed and furled up, wilted like flowers. Alec and Nobi made their way to the end of the main row of stalls and down to the edge of the pier. Several fishermen sat nearby mending a section of netting. The fog began to lift, gradually unveiling a hazy, indistinct sun. The unfocused light reflected off the still wet, colorless waterfront and turned sharp, making Alec squint. He noticed Nobi looking at his watch. He waited.

“It is almost time to be at work,” Nobi said.

“I have a breakfast meeting with Boon at eight,” Alec lied.
“It’s nearby, so I guess I’ll just stay here until it’s time to go. It makes more sense.”

Nobi appeared confused for a moment. But then his round face settled. “Yes, it makes more sense. I will catch the train, then.”

“Okay. See you.” He held out his hand.

Nobi took it, saying, “Soon we will have lunch.” Then he left.

Alec stayed where he was at the edge of the pier and watched him go, noticing for the first time what a sharp figure Nobi cut in his pin-striped suit, how cleanly it fit his back and shoulders. Finally, he turned and walked back along the pier, past the fishermen, who looked up from their work without interest, and over to a weathered bench that faced inland toward the market. He sat down to wait until it was time to go to work.

An hour passed that way. The women who had for hours pushed and poked, who had so fiercely fought for the lowest prices, began to disappear. They left quietly, singly and in small groups, without a trace of the determination they had shown. They carried their neat packages in string-net bags and walked carefully toward the train station and home, old women once again. The fish sellers remained, left with their unsold catch. Some of them stood in front of their stalls, sucking on their teeth while the sun dried their wet feet. Others began to pack up. They took down and folded the tarpaulins, stacked the crates of yellowtail and eel and squid. They swept the crushed ice into wooden barrels, whistling as they worked. They would move to another location now, a more permanent place to sell the remainder of their goods. Alec got to his feet and walked back down the row of partly dismantled stalls. He felt their eyes on him as he made his way unsteadily along the cobblestones and walked more quickly. It seemed to him as if the day were beginning and ending at the same time, the morning’s raw light exposing the emptiness that always lies in the wake of a hurried leavetaking.

I
t was more of a stayover than a slumber party. The two boys, Alec and Boon, staying up late, drinking booze and watching dirty shows on television. They removed their jackets and ties and shoes. They sat on the hard chairs in Boon’s study with the lights dimmed, a half-empty bottle of single malt Scotch whiskey on the table between them. A late night talk show flickered into the room from a television in the wall. The guests on the show were all female and topless. Boon said the name of the program was “Boobs,” pronounced “Boo-boos.” He poured more whiskey for both of them.