Picking Bones from Ash (14 page)

Timothy was always offering to buy me something: a vintage pin, a used scarf, an old hat. I demurred out of politeness and, frankly, my Japanese sense of not wanting to buy something that was once worn by a smelly European. One afternoon, however, I could not resist a little leather jacket we found for sale on the street. It was soft and brown, with a fringe on the sleeves and across the back like something an American Indian might wear. I felt at home in it, not because I thought of myself as a Native American, but because the jacket made me feel conspicuously from another country. It emphasized and made no excuses for my foreign face.

Timothy bought me a one-way train ticket back to Paris with a promise to be in touch soon. He had “business” to do alone. He said he was worried leaving me by myself in Paris, but I calmly explained that I would be fine on my own. In a way, I was relieved to see him go. With Masayoshi, I had always had to worry what my mother or stepsisters would say. Timothy and I were complete strangers with no expectations on our relationship and I feared I was becoming a bit too accustomed to this kind of independence. Once or twice, I even said something to Timothy about my feelings.

“We can’t just travel like this forever.”

“Says who?” He stroked my hair. “All those rules you have in your head. Illusions.”

But I kept hearing the voice of my mother telling me that what I was doing was not what she had dreamed of for me. I should go back to Paris and resume my studies.

How surprised was I then when a yawning, sick emptiness flared open inside my stomach as the train pulled away from Amsterdam. Without Timothy in Paris, I would have to think seriously about my future. Was I really going to graduate from the École Normale as previously planned? Should I go back to Japan a failure? The questions were so serious and so large. Why was I having them now? It was true that I had been away from home for a long time now, and perhaps this had left me open to influence. But I’d been on my own before and not wavered from trying to be a musician. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to play music—not exactly. I still had that
longing to do something important with my life, to feel the world embrace me with all its love. But I had discovered there were ways to capture this feeling that didn’t involve pianos and teachers and audiences. I was hungry to know more of the world.

I wanted Timothy to come back.

When I returned to my Paris room, I found a wad of mail shoved under the door. Most were postcards from my mother. She had a cold. Nothing to worry about. Mineko’s children were growing. Buried in a comment about changing autumn colors was the fact that Masayoshi’s son had celebrated his third birthday. I thought that any feelings I might have had for him had long since changed with the seasons. You can’t imagine what
I’ve
been doing, I replied, mentally, to all the postcards.

I only told Theo where I had been. He said, “I don’t want you to be in some
Madama Butterfly
opera, waiting for this man to come back to you.”

“He’ll come back.”

“Men are fickle creatures. Don’t you know your operas? I don’t want you to waste any energy on this American.”

I told Theo that I was just fine and not the least bit heartbroken. But privately, I did wonder if I would ever see Timothy again.

I was nervous that the Montmartins might suspect I hadn’t been to Japan at all. Instead, they misread my watchfulness as worry over my mother. Grief even. The time I had spent with Timothy acting as his interpreter had strengthened my language abilities. The family was surprised by how my “trip to Japan” had actually helped my fluency. While they were no more interested in me than before, the children, at least, did not pick on my French quite so much.

My trip with Timothy also had the curious effect of improving my piano playing. I was nervous when I first sat down to play. But Professor Montmartin merely nodded:
“Bon.”
There were no more tantrums. He no longer questioned my ability to emote. He began to talk, instead, about which pieces I should play for my first jury, and which competitions I should enter.

To the professor, I looked like a girl who’d suddenly come into her own as an artist. This was the goal my mother had been after for so many years. If she had suddenly come to Paris, she would have been proud of the result.

Late at night I sat in my apartment and looked out over the city. On
clear evenings, the gold moon shone bright against the blue-black sky. I thought about my mother’s stories about the mythical moon kingdom. I thought to myself that this life in Europe was most likely the closest I would ever come to being in a foreign place capable of bestowing magic on my life. How easy it was to lead a double life when you traveled abroad. Timothy had said he craved enlightenment. I craved the power I’d felt while we were traveling in Amsterdam, the sureness of knowing that I was a complete stranger with a special gift in an enchanted land.

I tried to fold myself back into the ordered world I’d lived in before meeting Timothy. But my imagination wandered and I could not stop craving something grander and more elusive from the world. Music, suddenly, was not sufficient.

But what to do?

I remembered Timothy’s subtle and mocking question: “Did you plan on me?” he had asked.

Throughout the fall, I struggled to concentrate. Mostly I was able to hide my inner battles and occasionally was able to convince myself that I still planned to play the piano until I was old and arthritic like Sanada-sensei. There were plenty of nights, though, when my sleep was interrupted by a dream involving Timothy, and I sat up in a sweat, wondering if he would come back, or if that adventurous path in my life had forever been abolished. I would need to learn to curb this craving. Fall turned to winter, and winter to spring, and still he did not come.

Is anything worse than a broken heart? Once again, I was lonely in Paris. To anesthetize myself, I tried to empty out my feelings in music. Professor Montmartin was impressed. Soon, he said, it would be time for me to enter competitions and he expected that I had a good chance of placing. The news should have made me happy, but I found that it left me feeling profoundly empty. I wrote to my mother: could she come visit me? She sent back a card explaining that she still had her cold, but that I should not worry. One day, she promised, we would be together.

Then one day that spring, I was walking home from class when I heard a voice behind me murmur in English. “Don’t you drink coffee anymore?”

I tried to appear impassive. “I do not need help with my homework anymore. So I do not go to La Coupole with Theo.”

“You know everything there is to know about music theory?”

“No one knows everything about music theory.”

Timothy smiled broadly and opened up his blazer. Peeking out of the inside pocket was a fat wad of French francs. He closed the jacket and continued smiling. A few people had seen this bold display of money and their attention unsettled me. Plus, Timothy appeared to have changed somewhat. He harbored a new confidence that seemed slightly alarming but also, if I were to be honest, attractive.

“Your commission, Satomi,” Timothy murmured quietly. “Don’t you want it?”

“It looks like lot of money,” I breathed.

“Not that much. Minus your train ticket. Minus the plane ticket.”

“Plane?”

“To Japan,” he said. “The collector bought almost everything we picked out in Amsterdam. Not a fake in the bunch. Those were his exact words. You made me look good.”

“I am happy for you.” I turned away and began to walk briskly. For a moment I heard only my footsteps, but then I heard his shoes slapping the pavement as he ran behind me.

“Aren’t you happy to see me? Because
I’m
happy to see you!”

“Five months,” my voice caught.

“Baby.”

But I pulled my hand away and my tears streaked across my temples as I ran.

“Hey. Satomi!”

I would not be distracted by this man again. Just recently, I’d come to feel relieved that he was gone from my life and that I could focus on my music as my mother had asked me to. “You,” I screamed, “are a bad person! You make promises. But you are sloppy. You live in phases!”

At this, he pulled me into an embrace and I, still so lonely, so determined, relented.

I led Timothy up the stairs to my little garret and made him a cup of tea on my hot plate. I prepared a plate of cookies I had bought the day before
and kept on the windowsill to try to keep cool. He counted out my commission. It was the first time I had ever earned money.

“We leave in two days, in case you were wondering.”

“I didn’t say that I was going with you.”

“But you will.” He grinned. “It’s lonely sleeping by yourself at night.”

I turned away from him.

“I
know
you’ve been alone,” he said softly. “I didn’t like it very much either.”

“Where were you?”

“I got sidetracked,” he said, bowing his head. “Look, I went to a party and got caught up with some people who were into some shit. Took awhile for the police to figure out who did what.”

“Police!”

“That’s why I didn’t say anything to you right away. I didn’t want you to worry. I came as soon as I could.”

“I have to prepare for my juries,” I replied stiffly.

“You told the professor you were going to Japan last time. This time you’ll be telling him the truth.”

“I cannot fail my mother.”

“Cannot fail,”
he mimicked. “Jesus. You sound biblical.”

No matter how many years have gone by, I have never managed to sound casual and natural in English. I am aware of my stiffness, of my complete lack of the jocularity that oozes so naturally from American mouths. Still, the teasing rankled me.

“You have never made fun of my speech before,” I said.

“It’s only a few days, Satomi. Easy cash. Anyway, isn’t travel romantic?”

At the sound of the word
romantic
, my body hardened. At the same time, the idea of an adventure together intrigued me. “Yes, travel will be romantic, and then you will leave again for Priscilla, or someone else.”

He came up behind me. “I’m not going anywhere. I would have come back even if it weren’t for the antiques I know we are going to find together.”

I was silent.

“We go to Japan, I deliver the stuff to the collector in San Francisco, and you come back for your juries.”

“And then?”

“Then I promise I’ll come back to you. And then I won’t go away again unless you go with me.”

If one’s speaking voice can acquire an accent while one is overseas, I felt that my body had acquired nearly the same thing. I did not realize it in France, but I now moved with a boldness and intention that I had not possessed as a young student. Not surprisingly, I was annoyed by the slowness with which everyone else moved in Japan and by the shyness of the other women my age. I hated the way they paused in front of vending machines, pretending to be unsure of what they wanted to drink. When they really were unsure of what they wanted to drink, why, I was all the more annoyed. How hard is it to decide whether you want tea, or Coke, or juice?

Timothy had planned for us to go to Kyoto and Nara and, if there was time, the village surrounding Lake Biwa. To me these towns had existed only in textbooks and in
samurai
movies; I’d never actually expected that I would visit Kyoto itself and see the temples and the shrines.

I learned then just how adaptable a person Timothy was, perhaps even more adaptable than I was. He’d already traveled so much by the time we went to Japan together he understood very quickly that to be comfortable here, he would have to behave differently. And learn he did, keeping his arms close to his body, checking to make sure that no one was behind him when he shifted his weight on a train, and pointing at things with his entire hand instead of his index finger. Years later, I realized just how competent a traveler Timothy had been when I observed other foreigners wandering around Japan, never quite adjusting to our rules or to our rhythms. He was a remarkably fluid person, though I never stopped feeling concerned when he wandered off by himself and I feared he was lost. It was only much later that I would learn what he was actually doing in those moments.

The best stores were in little towns where some eccentric elderly man had a house stuffed with plates or statues or odd things that he knew were “old,” but whose purpose and value he might not understand. My very favorite thing we found in those weeks was a large red-and-white dish with a swirling pattern and some green turtles.

I suppose I was also on edge during that trip because I had a deep fear that we would see someone I knew. Actually, it was fear mixed with hope.
I’d been so homesick and lonely in Paris and now I was in my homeland, which I hadn’t expected to see for many months yet. It felt like cheating. And yet, I longed to see someone I knew. Several times a day I flinched at the sight of an elderly face I was sure looked like our old neighbor, or a priest I thought might be Masayoshi. Once I even thought I saw Shinobu. I knew the chances of encountering an acquaintance were slim. Who among my family or my school friends would be wandering around these small towns near Kyoto?

Timothy urged me to call my mother. The call would be cheaper from here than from Europe, and as long as I made sure no other Japanese person burst in on my call, she’d never know which country I was phoning from, but would be pleased that I had contacted her. My guilt would be eased.

I disagreed. I thought she’d be angry that I was wasting money on a call that had no specific purpose, but Timothy was adamant that phone calls didn’t require a specific reason. I could just call because I felt like it. I could tell her that I was homesick and that I missed her. So, armed with a handful of change, I found a bright-green phone in a train station.

The phone seemed to ring a long time before someone answered. The voice on the other end caught me by surprise.

“Chieko?”

“So. You finally decided to call.” She sounded almost pleased with herself as she said this and her tone of voice alarmed me. Had she, or someone we both knew, seen me?