After the quake: stories Page 0,24
separated, and a bitter feud involving lawyers had dragged on for a full year. “The thing that finally did it for me,” her husband claimed, “was that you didn’t want to have children.”
They had finally concluded their divorce settlement three years ago. A few months later, someone smashed the headlights of her Honda Accord in the hospital parking lot and wrote “JAP CAR” on the hood in white letters. She called the police. A big black policeman filled out the damage report and then said to her, “Lady, this is Detroit. Next time buy a Ford Taurus.”
What with one thing and another, Satsuki became fed up with living in America and decided to return to Japan. She found a position at a university hospital in Tokyo. “You can’t do that,” said a member of her research team from India. “All our years of research are about to bear fruit. We could be nominated for a Nobel Prize—it’s not that crazy,” he pleaded with her to stay, but Satsuki’s mind was made up. Something inside her had snapped.
She stayed on alone at the hotel in Bangkok after the conference ended. “I’ve worked out a vacation for myself after this,” she told her friends. “I’m going to a resort near here for a complete rest—a whole week of nothing but reading, swimming, and drinking nice cold cocktails by the pool.”
“That’s great,” they said. “Everybody needs a breather once in a while—it’s good for your thyroid, too!” With handshakes and hugs and promises to get together again, Satsuki said goodbye to all her friends.
Early the next morning, a limousine pulled up to the hotel entrance as planned. It was an old navy blue Mercedes, as perfect and polished as a jewel and far more beautiful than a new car. It looked like an object from another world, as if it had dropped fully formed from someone’s fantasies. A slim Thai man probably in his early sixties was to be her driver and guide. He wore a heavily starched white short-sleeved shirt, a black silk necktie, and dark sunglasses. His face was tanned, his neck long and slender. Presenting himself to Satsuki, he did not shake her hand but instead brought his hands together and gave a slight, almost Japanese, bow.
“Please call me Nimit. I will have the honor to be your companion for the coming week.”
It was not clear whether “Nimit” was his first or last name. He was, in any case, “Nimit,” and he told her this in a courteous, easy-to-understand English devoid of American casual-ness or British affectation. He had, in fact, no perceptible accent. Satsuki had heard English spoken this way before, but she couldn’t remember where.
“The honor is mine,” she said.
Together, they passed through Bangkok’s vulgar, noisy, polluted streets. The traffic crawled along, people cursed each other, and the sound of car horns tore through the atmosphere like an air-raid siren. Plus, there were elephants lumbering down the street—and not just one or two of them. What were elephants doing in a city like this? she asked Nimit.
“Their owners bring them from the country,” he explained. “They used to use them for logging, but there was not enough work for them to survive that way. They brought their animals to the city to make money doing tricks for tourists. Now there are far too many elephants here, and that makes things very difficult for the city people. Sometimes an elephant will panic and run amok. Just the other day, a great many automobiles were damaged that way. The police try to put a stop to it, of course, but they cannot confiscate the elephants from their keepers. There would be no place to put them if they did, and the cost of feeding them would be enormous. All they can do is leave them alone.”
The car eventually emerged from the city, drove onto an expressway, and headed north. Nimit took a cassette tape from the glove compartment and slipped it into the car stereo, setting the volume low. It was jazz—a tune that Satsuki recognized with some emotion.
“Do you mind turning the volume up?” she asked.
“Yes, Doctor, of course,” Nimit said, making it louder. The tune was “I Can’t Get Started,” in exactly the same performance she had heard so often in the old days.
“Howard McGhee on trumpet, Lester Young on tenor,” she murmured, as if to herself. “JATP.”
Nimit glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “Very impressive, Doctor,” he said. “Do you like jazz?”
“My father was crazy about