Stepping down from the sorry two-car local train that seemed ready to rust up any minute, the very first thing to hit me was the familiar smell of open grassy spaces. The smell of picnics way back when. Nostalgic things, all blown my way on the May breeze. I cocked my head and strained to listen, and I could make out the twittering of sparrows.
Letting out a long yawn, I sat down on a station bench and dejectedly smoked a cigarette. That invigorating feeling I'd left the apartment with in the morning had utterly vanished. Nothing but more of the same, over and over. Or so it seemed. An endless deja vu, growing worse at every turn.
There had been a time when friends and I used to fall asleep sprawled out any which way on the floor together. At dawn, someone would invariably step on my head. Then it would be "Oops, sorry," followed by that same someone taking a leak. More of the same, over and over again.
I loosened my tie and, cigarette dangling from the corner of my mouth, I scraped the soles of the not-quite-broken-in shoes on the platform. To lessen the pain in my feet. Not that the pain was all that bad, but it gave me the uneasy feeling that my body was somehow broken into bits and pieces.
No sign of any dog.
* * *
An uneasy feeling ...
This uneasiness comes over me from time to time, and I feel as if I've somehow been pieced together from two different puzzles. Whatever it is, at times like these I toss down a whiskey and hit the sack. And when I get up in the morning, things are even worse. More of the same, one more time around.
One time when I woke up, I found myself flanked by twin girls. Now things like this had happened to me many times before, but I had to admit a twin to each side was a first. The both of them sleeping away, noses nestled snugly into my shoulders. It was a bright, clear Sunday morning.
Finally, they both woke up – almost simultaneously – and proceeded to worm into the shirts and jeans they'd tossed under the bed. Without so much as a word, they went into the kitchen, made toast and coffee, got butter from the fridge, and laid it all out on the table. They knew what they were doing. Outside the window, birds, which I couldn't identify either, perched on the chainlink fence of the golf course and chattered away rapid fire.
"Your names?" I asked them. I had a nasty hangover.
"They're not much as names," said the one seated on the right.
"Really, nothing special as names go," said the one on the left. "You know how it is."
"Yeah, I know," I said.
So we sat facing each other across the table, munching toast and drinking coffee. The coffee was good.
"Does it bother you, us not having names?" one of them asked.
"Hmm ... what d'you think?"
The two of them gave it some thought.
"Well, if you simply must have names for us, choose something that seems to fit," proposed the other.
"Call us whatever you like."
The girls always took turns speaking. It was like an FM stereo check, and made my head even worse.
"For instance?" I asked.
"Left and Right," said one.
"Vertical and Horizontal," said the other.
"Up and Down."
"Front and Back."
"East and West."
"Entrance and Exit," I managed to get in, not to be outdone. The two of them looked at each other and laughed contentedly.
* * *
Where there's an entrance, there's got to be an exit. Most things work that way. Public mailboxes, vacuum cleaners, zoos, plastic condiment squeeze bottles. Of course, there are things that don't. For example, mousetraps.
* * *
I once set a mousetrap under my apartment sink. I used peppermint gum for bait. After scouring the entire apartment, that was the only thing approaching food I could find. I found it in the pocket of my winter coat, along with a movie ticket stub.
By the third morning, a tiny mouse had flirted with fate. Still very young, the mouse was the color of those cashmere sweaters you see piled up in London duty-free shops. It was maybe fifteen or sixteen in human years. A tender age. A bitten-off piece of gum lay under its paws.
I had no idea what to do with the thing now that I'd caught it. Hind leg still pinned under the spring wire, the mouse died on the fourth morning. Seeing it lying there taught me a lesson. Everything needs an entrance and exit. That's about the size of it.
* * *
Skirting the hills, the tracks ran so straight they seemed ruled. Far ahead you could see woods, like little wads of dull green paper. The rails glinted in the sun, merging into the green distance. No matter how far you went, the same scenery would go on forever. A depressing thought if there ever was one. Give me a subway any day.
I finished my cigarette, then stretched a bit, looking up at the sky. It had been a long time since I'd really looked at the sky. Or rather, it had been a long time since I'd tried to take a good look at anything.
Not a cloud in the sky. Moreover, the whole of it was veiled in that languid opaqueness unique to spring. From above, the blue was making a noble effort to penetrate that intangible veil, as sunlight silently sifted down like fine dust from the atmosphere, and unnoticed by anyone, seemed to form a layer over the ground.
Light was swaying in the warm breeze. The air flowed as easily as a flock of birds flitting among the trees, grouping to take flight. It glided down the gentle green slope alongside the tracks, crossed over, and slipped through the woods, hardly stirring a single leaf. The call of a cuckoo rang out straight across the softly luminous scene, the echo disappearing over the ridge. A succession of hills rose and fell, like sleepy giant cats curled in the pooled sunlight of time.
* * *
The pain in my foot grew still worse.
* * *
So let me tell you something about this well.
Naoko had moved to the area when she was twelve. 1961. The year Ricky Nelson sang "Hello Mary Lou." It was a peaceful green valley at the time, not a single thing to claim your attention. A handful of farmhouses with a few fields, a stream full of crayfish, a one-track local railroad, barely a yawn of a train station, that was it. Most farmhouses had persimmon trees planted in the yard, and weather-beaten old barns standing to one side – or rather, tottering and ready to fall apart. And there were those cheap tin signs advertising tissue paper or soap nailed on barn walls that faced the tracks. The place really was like that. Not even a dog anywhere, Naoko had said.
The house she moved into was a two-story Western-style villa built sometime around the Korean War. Nothing very spacious, mind you, but the sturdy post timbers and quality lumber chosen for each part gave the house a comfortably solid look. The exterior, painted in three shades of green, had faded handsomely in the sun and wind and rain to blend in perfectly with the surrounding countryside. There was a huge yard, and in it several stands of trees and a small pond. In among the trees was a quaint little octagonal arbor that had been used as a studio, its bay windows hung with lace curtains faded to a nondescript color. Down by the pond, daffodils were in riotous bloom, and every morning birds came to bathe.