time, but I have no way of knowing. “You took my watch,” I tell him. But he insists we can estimate very exactly if I describe the light in the room when I first threw up. We spar about this issue for another few minutes. And finally I ask, “What did the girl die of?” “A kind of neurological trauma,” he answers automatically, earnestly. Then adds,” But not from fleas. Do your feet feel numb?” he asks in the same level tones. “No.” “Interesting,” he says. “Please take off your shirt. When your feet begin to feel numb, please tell Kawabata-san and he’ll bring you back.” ‘You have some medicine to cure that?” I ask. “No. There is none. At least there is none now. But I have an idea to keep the numbness from spreading. Neurology is so experimental, so trial and error. That’s why I like it. You can stumble on things no one could have thought of. You may urinate some blood. I studied in Seattle.” You may piss blood and I studied in Seattle. Some connection there. I answer in nauseated level-tone, “I understand everyone urinates blood in Seattle.” “Do you really think that?” “I’ve never been to Seattle.” “So you are joking, but joking is not appropriate to your situation.” I answer, “So desu neh.”
My feet do go numb, numbing and tingling. It seems golf balls of pain are shifting around on the soles of my feet. And the numbness moves up my ankles toward my knees. Kawabata, good solider, takes me back to Dr. Matsuno. “Did you eat any of the girl’s food?” “No.” “Hmnn, well we need to put you in the infirmary and watch what happens.” “What is going to happen?” “I can’t be sure, but I assume the numbness will move north.” “And then what?” “We’ll have to watch, you will be advancing research greatly.” “It hurts to walk. In fact I’m not sure I can walk.” “That’s an important sign. We’ll get you to the infirmary, even if we have to have soldiers carry you.” Kawabata says he cannot bring me extra paper in the infirmary.
Owen held up the page to the light on his desk as if to imagine mysterious writing able to appear on the remainder of the whitish yellow sheet. But there was nothing. He turned to the second packet and pulled off the thick rubber band, but then decided not to open the pages. He tossed the collection on his desk and went into the tatami room and sprawled out on the rush mats. The cool give of the tatami was, as always, relieving, inviting. The pages needed explanation—Mioko’s covering note said almost nothing. He wondered if she were playing coy with him, or had, in fact, simply lost the thread of coherence as she gathered them up for mailing. And why send them to him? The pages were fragile all right, almost brown on the edges, almost brittle and the ink had faded in some places to illegibility. So Mioko wanted to draw him back, was that it? Or was she just scattered and confused? He wanted information and without Yasuko around to deflect his inquiry. He assumed Mioko wanted that too. Why wouldn’t she?
1
That afternoon Mariko phoned. “I figured out the link between baseball and sumo,” she said without even a mocking “moshi, moshi” opener. “It’s a short timing thing. Compression. Squeezing everything into the shortest possible time, in baseball only a tenth of second—in sumo maybe longer, but maybe it could be argued (that’s a good collection phrase—one giving you time to do some internal translations, isn’t it?), yes, it could be argued that the key balance thrust is only a tenth of a second in sumo too. That’s why we Japanese thrill to both sumo and baseball. Do you agree?”
“At such conferences,” Owen said, “the key question is always—‘would you comment on that?’ You never ask for agreement in Japan.”
“You’ve been reading your guide books again, “Mariko said, after a pause.
“There’s a similarity in body shapes,” Owen said.
“In the guide books?”
“No. Between sumo wrestlers and baseball long ball hitters. Why are you thinking about it?”
“It came up at the American center during the conference. A professor asked why the Japanese liked baseball and sumo, since they were so different. And I’ve been thinking about it ever.”
“I think the expression is ‘ever since’.”
“Ever since? How does that make sense?”
“Since. Not sense. Since,” Owen corrected.
Again a pause. He wondered if she’d hang up, but finally she said, “No jokes. I’ve told you that. Jokes don’t translate.”
“That’s a shame. I wonder why we get along.”
“Do we?”
“I like your company,” Owen answered. “And we share the church.”
“Yes,” she replied hanging back a bit.
“Although I know you’re not a Christian.”
“So desu ne.”
“But you have an interest,” Owen paused, “maybe even beyond learning English, is that it?”
“No interest,” she answered. “I’m not for the three in one, you know. And the guilt bores me.”
“I know that.”
“I wish it bored you.”
“You can teach me how.”
“Now—there’s a good idea. Why don’t we meet for dinner at Gaylords. You like Indian.”
“Done,” Owen answered. “In one hour.”
“I expect you to be free of guilt by the time you get to Sannomiya.”
“Not possible. Too much sin in the world.”
“Ever since,” she answered and hung up.
Over onion bajis and cheese pakoras and before the palak paneer she always ordered, moving the chunks of paneer to the edge of her metal serving dish, and the lamb vindaloo, his standard, she said to him. “Here’s how to think about natural functions.”
“Natural functions?”
“About what we’ll be doing. Here’s what a student told me just a few days ago—he’s very earnest about learning his English, so he could talk to his Canadian lover—a fellow who works in the consulate. ‘I like him so I give him my front, but I don’t love him so I don’t give him my back.’”
“And what did you answer?” Owen asked.
“I couldn’t think of anything to say.”
“And you want my advice?”
“No, I wanted you to know how he thought about such things. I wanted you to see how he looked at sex, the naturalness of it.”
“Front not back. Of course, the naturalness of that. It’s positively ‘off hand’”.
“Off hand?”
“A joke, sorry. Casual. Without emotional investment. Unthinkingness.”
“Yes, all of those things and none of those things too. Just something natural.”
“Yes, natural. In front, natural.”
The
