South of the Border, West of the Sun Page 0,51

by devouring art. The regular vulture lives by devouring the corpses of unknown people. They’re completely different”

“You’re a strange one!” She laughed. And there in the train seat ever so slightly, she moved her shoulder to touch mine. The one and only time in the past two months our bodies touched.

March passed, and so did April. My younger daughter started going to nursery school. With the kids away from home, Yukiko began doing volunteer work in the community, helping out at a home for handicapped children. Most of the time it was my job to take the kids to school and pick them up again. Whenever I was busy, my wife took over. Watching the children grow, day by day, I could feel myself aging. All by themselves, regardless of any plans I might have for them, my children were getting bigger. I loved my daughters, of course. Watching them grow up made me happier than anything. Sometimes, though, seeing them grow bigger by the month made me feel oppressed. It was as if a tree were growing inside my body, laying down roots, spreading its branches, pushing down on my organs, my muscles, bones, and skin, forcing its way outward. It was so stifling at times that I couldn’t sleep.

Once a week I met Shimamoto. And daily I shuttled my daughters back and forth to school. And a couple of times a week I made love to my wife. Since starting to see Shimamoto again, I made love to Yukiko more often. Not out of guilt, though. Loving her, and being loved, was the only way I could hold myself together.

“You’ve changed. What’s going on?” Yukiko asked me one afternoon after sex. “Nobody told me that when men reach thirty-seven their sex drive goes into high gear.”

“Nothing’s going on. Same old same old,” I replied.

She looked at me for a while. And shook her head slightly. “My oh my, I wonder what’s going on inside that head of yours,” she said.

In my free time I listened to classical music and gazed out at Aoyama Cemetery. I didn’t read as much as I used to. My concentration was shot to hell.

Several times I saw the young woman in the Mercedes 260E. Waiting for our daughters to come out the school gate, we stood there, making small talk, the kind of gossip only someone living in Aoyama would comprehend. Advice about which supermarket lot you could find parking space in, and when; the latest on a certain Italian restaurant, which had changed chefs and now couldn’t serve decent food; news that the Meiji-ya import store was having a sale on imported wine next month, etc. Damn, I thought I’ve become a regular gossipy hausfrau! But these things were all we had in common.

In the middle of April, Shimamoto disappeared again. The last time I saw her, we were sitting in the Robin’s Nest. Just before ten, a phone call came from my other bar, something I had to take care of right away. “I’ll be back in thirty minutes or so,” I told her.

“All right,” she said, smiling. “I’ll read a book while you’re gone.”

I rushed to take care of the chore, then hurried back to the bar, but she was no longer there. It was a little past eleven. On the counter, on the back of a match book, she’d left a message: “Probably I won’t be able to come here for a while,” the note said. “I have to go home now. Goodbye. Take care.”

I was at loose ends for days. I paced around my house, wandered the streets aimlessly, and went to pick up my daughters early. And I talked with the Mercedes 260E lady. We went to a nearby coffee shop to have a cup of coffee, gossiping as usual about the state of the vegetables at the Kinokuniya Market, the fertilized eggs at the Natural House food store, the bargain sales at Miki House. The woman was a fan of Inaba Yoshie’s designer wear, and before the season arrived she ordered all the clothes she wanted from the catalog. We talked, too, about the wonderful eel restaurant near the police box on Omote Sando, which was no longer in business. We enjoyed talking. The woman was more friendly and open than she had first appeared to be. Not that I was sexually attracted to her. I just needed someone—anyone—to talk to. What I wanted was harmless, meaningless talk, talk that would lead anywhere but back to