South of the Border, West of the Sun Page 0,53

at the gym. On weekends I’d go to Hakone, swim in the Fujiya Hotel pool with my kids, and we’d all have dinner together. And at night I’d make love to my wife.

I was fast approaching middle age, yet had no extra fat to speak of, no thinning hair. Not a single white hair, either. Exercise helped keep the inevitable physical decline at bay. Lead a well-regulated life, never overdo anything, and watch your diet: that was my motto. I never got sick, and most people would have guessed I was barely thirty.

My wife loved to touch my body. She’d touch the muscles on my chest and stomach, and fondle my penis and balls. Yukiko, too, was going to the gym to work out regularly. But it didn’t seem to slim her down.

“Must be getting old,” she sighed. “My weight goes down, but this roll of pudge is still here.”

“I like your body just the way it is,” I told her. “You’re fine the way you are—no need to work out or go on diets. It’s not like you’re fat or anything.” Which wasn’t a lie. I really did like the softness of her body with its bit of extra flesh. I loved to rub her naked back.

“You just don’t get it,” she said, shaking her head. “You say it’s okay for me to look the way I am now, but it takes every ounce of energy I have just to stay in the same place.”

An outsider would probably have said we had an ideal life. Certainly I was convinced of it at times. I was fired up about my work and was taking in a good deal of money. I owned a four-bedroom condo in Aoyama, a small cottage in the mountains of Hakone, a BMW, a Jeep Cherokee. And I had a happy family. I loved my wife and my two daughters. What more could anyone ask for? If, say, Yukiko and the kids had begged me to tell them what they should do to be even better to me, to be loved even more, there was nothing I could have said. I could not imagine a happier life.

But since Shimamoto had stopped coming to see me, I was stuck on the airless surface of the moon. If she was gone forever, no one remained to whom I could reveal my true feelings. On sleepless nights I’d lie in bed and replay over and over in my mind that scene at the snowy Komatsu Airport. Recall it enough times, and the memories would start to fade. Or so I thought. The more I remembered, the stronger the memories became. The word “Delayed” flashing on the flight information board; outside the window, the snow coming down hard. You couldn’t see more than fifty yards. On the bench, Shimamoto sat still, hugging herself tight. Her navy pea coat and muffler. Her body with its mixed scent of tears and sadness. I could smell that scent. Beside me, in bed, my wife breathed quietly, asleep. She knows nothing. I closed my eyes and shook my head. She knows nothing.

The abandoned bowling alley parking lot, my melting snow in my mouth and feeding it to her. Shimamoto in the airplane, in my arms. Her closed eyes, the sigh from her slightly parted lips. Her body, soft and limp. She wanted me then. Her heart was open to me. Yet I held myself back, back on the surface of the moon, stuck in this lifeless world. And in the end she left me, and my life was lost all over again.

Sometimes I’d wake up at two or three in the morning and not be able to fall asleep again. I’d get out of bed, go to the kitchen, and pour myself a whiskey. Glass in hand, I’d look down at the darkened cemetery across the way and the headlights of the cars on the road. The moments of time linking night and dawn were long and dark. If I could cry, it might make things easier. But what would I cry over? Who would I cry for? I was too self-centered to cry for other people, too old to cry for myself.

Autumn finally arrived. And when it did, I came to a decision. Something had to give: I couldn’t keep on living like this.

13

In the morning after dropping off my daughters at nursery school, I went to the pool and swam my usual two thousand meters. I imagined I was a fish. Just