South of the Border, West of the Sun Page 0,52
Shimamoto.
When I ran out of things to do, I’d go shopping. Once, on a whim, I bought six shirts. I bought toys and dolls for my daughters, accessories for Yukiko. I stopped by the BMW showroom a couple of times to check out the M5; I didn’t really plan to buy one but let the salesman give me his pitch.
A few unsettled weeks like this, and I found myself again able to concentrate. I’m going nowhere fast here, I decided. So I called a designer and an interior decorator to discuss remodeling the bars. They were overdue for a little remodeling anyway, and it was high time I did some serious thinking about how I ran my business. Just like with people, with bars there’s a time to leave them alone and a time for change. Being stuck in the same environment, you grow dull and lethargic. Your energy level takes a nosedive. Even castles in the air can do with a fresh coat of paint. I started with the other bar, saving the Robin’s Nest for later. I began by removing all the hyper-chic aspects of the bar, which, when you came right down to it, were a pain in the butt, the whole point being to come up with an efficient functional workplace. The audio system and air conditioning were about due for an overhaul too, as was the menu, which I drastically revamped. I interviewed my employees and came up with a hefty list of suggested improvements. In great detail I laid out to the designer my vision of what the bar should be, had him draw up a plan, then sent him back to the drawing board to incorporate features that had popped into my head in the meantime. We repeated this process a number of times. I selected all the materials, had the contractors draw up estimates, readjusted my budget. I spent three weeks scouring shops throughout Tokyo in search of the world’s greatest soap dispenser. All of this kept me extremely busy. But that, after all, was precisely what I was after.
May came and went, then it was June. Still no Shimamoto. I was sure she was gone forever. Probably I won’t be able to come here for a while, she’d written. It was this probably and for a while and the ambiguity inherent in them that made me suffer. Someday she might show up again. But I couldn’t just sit around, resting my hopes and dreams on vague promises. Keep on like this, I thought, and I’ll end up a blithering idiot so I concentrated on keeping myself busy. I started going to the pool every morning, and I’d swim two thousand meters without stopping, then go upstairs to the gym for weight lifting. A week of that, and my muscles started to rebel. Waiting at a stoplight one day, I felt my left foot go numb, and I couldn’t step on the clutch. Finally, though, my muscles got used to the workout. Hard physical effort left no room to think, and keeping my body always in motion helped me concentrate on the trivia of daily life. Daydreaming was forbidden. I tried my best to concentrate on whatever I was doing. Washing my face, I focused on that; listening to music, I was all music. It was the only way I could survive.
In the summer, Yukiko and I often took the kids to our cottage in Hakone. Away from Tokyo, in the great outdoors, Yukiko and the children were relaxed and happy. They picked flowers, watched birds with binoculars, played tag, splashed about in the river. Or else they just lay around in the yard. But they didn’t know the truth. That on a certain snowy winter day, if my plane had been grounded, I would have thrown them all away to be with Shimamoto. My job, my family, my money—everything, without flinching. And here I was, my head still full of Shimamoto. The sensation of holding her, of kissing her cheek, wouldn’t leave me. I couldn’t drive the image of Shimamoto from my mind and replace it with my wife. Just as I could never tell what Shimamoto was thinking, no one had a clue to what was in my mind.
I decided to spend the rest of our summer vacation finishing up the remodeling. While Yukiko and the children were in Hakone, I stayed in Tokyo alone to supervise the work and give last-minute instructions. I’d swim in the pool, work out