South of the Border, West of the Sun Page 0,18

first thing about it For the past six years I don’t think I’ve swallowed a single pill.”

“You’re pretty healthy, then.”

“I don’t even get hangovers,” I said. “When I was a kid, though, I was pretty sickly. Took lots of medicine. I was an only child, so my parents were overprotective.”

She nodded, and stared into her coffee cup for a while. It was a long time before she spoke again.

“Pharmacology isn’t the most thrilling subject,” she began. “There’s got to be a million things more fun than memorizing the ingredients of different medicines. It isn’t romantic, like astronomy, or dramatic, like being a doctor. But there’s something intimate about it, something I can feel close to. Something down-to-earth.”

“I see,” I said. She could talk, after all. It just took her longer than most to find the right words.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” I asked.

“Two older brothers. One’s already married.”

“So you’re studying pharmacology because you’ll be taking over the family store?”

She blushed again. And was silent for a good long time. “I don’t know. My brothers both have jobs, so maybe I will end up running the place. But nothing’s decided. If I don’t feel like it, that’s okay, my father said. He’ll run it as long as he can, then sell it.”

I nodded, and waited for her to continue.

“But I’m thinking maybe I should take it over. With this leg, it’d be hard to find another job.”

So we talked and passed the afternoon together. With plenty of pauses, and long waits for her to continue. Whenever I asked her a question, she blushed. I actually enjoyed our talk, which for me at the time was a real accomplishment. Sitting there in the coffee shop with her, I felt something close to nostalgia well up in me. She began to feel like someone I’d known all my life.

Not that I was attracted to her. I wasn’t. She was nice, all right, and I enjoyed our time together. She was a pretty girl and, like my friend said, quite pleasant. But all these good points aside, when I asked myself if there was something in her that would bowl me over, that would zoom straight to my heart, the answer was no. Nada.

Only Shimamoto ever did that to me. There I was, listening to this girl, all the time thinking of Shimamoto. I knew I shouldn’t be, but there it was. Just thinking of Shimamoto made me shiver all over, all these many years later. A slightly fevered excitement, as if I were gently pushing open a door deep within me. Walking with this pretty girl with a bad leg through Hibiya Park, though, that kind of excitement, that all-over shivery feeling, was missing. What I did feel for her was a certain sympathy, and a calmness.

Her home—the pharmacy, that is—was in Kobinata. I took her back on the bus. We sat side by side, and she hardly said a word.

A few days later, my friend from work came over and told me the girl really seemed to like me. Next vacation, he said, why don’t the four of us go somewhere together? I made some excuse and bowed out Not that I minded seeing her again and talking with her. Actually, I really did want to have a chance to talk with her sometime. Under different circumstances we might have ended up good friends. But it started with a double date, and the point of double dates is to find a partner. So if I did ask her out again, I’d be taking on a certain responsibility. And the last thing I wanted was to hurt her. All I could do was refuse.

I never saw her again.

6

During this period, one more woman with a lame leg figured in a strange incident whose meaning, even now, I can’t totally understand. I was twenty-eight when it happened.

I was in Shibuya, walking along in the end-of-year crowds, when I spied a woman dragging her leg exactly as Shimamoto used to do. She had on a long red overcoat and a black patent-leather handbag was tucked under one arm. On her left wrist she wore a silver watch, more like a bracelet really. Everything about her said money. I was walking along the opposite side of the street but when I saw her, I rushed across at the intersection. The streets were so crowded it made me wonder where all these people could possibly have come from, but it didn’t take long for me