South of the Border, West of the Sun Page 0,40

took off her gloves and put them in her coat pocket. She undid her shoulder bag, opened it, and removed a small bag made out of a pretty cloth. Inside the bag was an urn. She undid the fastening on the lid and carefully opened the urn. For a while she gazed at what was inside.

I stood beside her, watching, without a word.

Inside the urn were white ashes. Very carefully, so that none would spill out she poured the ashes onto her left palm. There was barely enough to cover her hand. Ash left after a cremation, I figured. It was a quiet windless afternoon, and the ash didn’t stir. Shimamoto returned the empty urn to her bag, stuck her index finger into the ash, put the finger to her mouth, and licked it. She looked at me and tried to smile. But she couldn’t. Her finger remained near her lips.

As she crouched by the river and scattered the ashes, I stood next to her, watching. In an instant the small amount of ash was carried away. She and I stood on the shore, gazing at the water. She stared at her palm, then finally brushed off the remaining ash and put on her gloves.

“Will it really reach the sea?” she asked.

“I think so,” I said. But I wasn’t sure. The ocean was a fair distance away. Perhaps the ash would settle somewhere. But even so, some of it would, eventually, reach the sea.

She took a piece of board that lay nearby and began digging in a soft spot of ground. I helped her. When we’d dug a small hole, she buried the urn wrapped in cloth. Crows cawed in the distance, observing our actions from beginning to end. No matter; look if you want to, I thought. We’re not doing anything bad. All we did was scatter some burned ash in the river.

“Do you think it will turn to rain?” Shimamoto asked, tapping the tip of her boot on the ground.

I looked at the sky. “I think it’ll hold out for a while,” I said.

“No, that’s not what I mean. What I mean is, will the child’s ashes flow to the sea, mix with the seawater, evaporate, form into clouds, and fall as rain?”

I looked up at the sky one more time. And then at the river flowing.

“You never know,” I replied.

We headed in our rental car back to the airport. The weather was deteriorating fast. The sky was covered with heavy clouds, no blue visible. It looked like it would snow at any minute.

“Those were my baby’s ashes. The only baby I ever had,” Shimamoto said, as if talking to herself.

I looked at her, then looked ahead. Trucks sprayed up muddy melted snow, and I had to turn on the wipers every once in a while.

“My baby died the day after it was born,” she said. “It lived just one day. I held it only a couple of times. It was a beautiful baby. So very soft … They didn’t know the cause, but it couldn’t breathe well. When it died it was already a different color.”

I couldn’t say a thing. I reached out my hand and placed it on hers.

“It was a baby girl. Without a name.”

“When was that?”

“This time last year. In February.”

“Poor thing,” I said.

“I didn’t want to bury it anywhere. I couldn’t stand the thought of it in some dark place. I wanted to keep it beside me for a while, then let it flow into the sea and turn into rain.”

She was silent for a long, long time. I kept on driving, not saying a word. She probably didn’t feel like talking, so I thought it might be best to leave her alone. But soon I noticed that something was wrong—her breathing sounded strange, a mechanical rasping. At first I thought it was the car engine, but then I realized the sound was coming from beside me. It was as if she had a hole in her windpipe and air was leaking out each time she took a breath.

Waiting for a signal to change, I looked at her. She was white as a sheet and strangely stiff. She rested her head against the headrest and stared straight ahead. She didn’t move a muscle, only from time to time would blink, as if forced to. I drove on for a little while and found a place to pull over—the parking lot of a boarded-up bowling alley. On top of the building, which looked like