South of the Border, West of the Sun Page 0,17
my time the best way I can and enjoy myself. So I never went out drinking with the guys from work. Not that I was a loner who didn’t get along with people. I just didn’t make the effort to get to know my officemates on a personal level. I was determined that my free time was going to be mine.
Four or five years passed in a flash. I had several girlfriends, but nothing lasted. I’d date one for a few months, and then start thinking: This isn’t what I want. I couldn’t find within these women something that was waiting just for me. I slept with a couple of them, but it was no big deal. I consider this the third stage of my life—the twelve years between my starting college and turning thirty. Years of disappointment and loneliness. And silence. Frozen years, when my feelings were shut up inside me.
I withdrew into myself. I ate alone, took walks alone, went swimming alone, and went to concerts and movies alone. I didn’t feel hurt or sad. I often thought of Shimamoto and of Izumi, and wondered where they were now, what they were doing. For all I knew, they might be married, even have children. I would have given anything to see them, to talk with them, even for an hour. With Shimamoto and Izumi, I could be honest I racked my brains wondering how to get back together with Izumi, how to see Shimamoto again. How wonderful that would be, I imagined. Not that I actually took steps to see that it came true. The two of them were lost to me forever. The hands of a clock run in only one direction. I started talking to myself, drinking alone at night. I was sure I would never get married.
Two years after I started work, I had a date with a girl who had a bad leg. One of the guys from work set me up on a double date.
“Something’s wrong with one of her legs,” he told me reluctantly. “But she’s cute and has a great personality. I know you’ll like her. And you won’t really notice the leg. She drags it a bit is all.”
“Hey, no problem,” I replied. Truth be told, if he hadn’t mentioned her bad leg, I would have turned him down. I was sick to death of double dates and blind dates. But when I heard about her leg, I somehow couldn’t refuse.
You won’t really notice the leg. She drags it a bit is all.
The girl was a friend of the guy’s girlfriend. They had been classmates in high school. She was on the small side, with decent looks. Hers was a subdued sort of beauty, reminding me of some small animal deep in the woods who seldom showed its face. The four of us went to a movie one Sunday morning and then had lunch together. She hardly said a word. I tried my best to draw her out, but it was no go. She just smiled. Afterward, we split from the other couple. She and I went to take a walk in Hibiya Park, where we had some coffee. She dragged her right leg, not the left like Shimamoto. The way she twisted it too, was different. Whereas Shimamoto rotated her leg slightly as she moved it forward, this girl pointed the tip sideways a bit and dragged it straight ahead. Still, their way of walking was remarkably similar.
She had on a red turtleneck sweater and jeans, and a pair of desert boots. She wore hardly any makeup, and her hair was in a ponytail. Though she said she was a senior in college, she looked younger. I couldn’t decide if she was just a quiet person or was nervous meeting someone for the first time. Maybe she just didn’t have anything to talk about. Anyway, I wouldn’t exactly characterize our initial interaction as conversation. The only fact I was able to drag out of her was that she was at a private college, majoring in pharmacology.
“Pharmacology, huh? Is it interesting?” I asked. We were in the coffee shop in the park, having a cup.
She blushed.
“Hey, it’s okay,” I said. “Making textbooks isn’t exactly the world’s most exciting activity. The world’s full of boring things. Don’t worry about it.”
She thought for a while and at long last opened her mouth. “It’s not that interesting. But my parents own a drugstore.”
“Could you teach me something about pharmacology? I don’t know the