Hiromi Kawakami - The Briefcase

What are you writing? I asked, and Sensei picked up a sheet of paper from the table to show me.

OCTOPUS FLESH, FAINTLY RED was written on the page. I gazed at it for a good long while, and then Sensei said, “I can’t seem to come up with the final syllables.”

He mused, “What might come after ‘faintly red’?”

I flopped down to sit on a cushion. While I had been agonizing over my feelings for Sensei, he had been agonizing over the puzzle of the octopus.

“Sensei,” I said in a low voice. Sensei raised his head absently. On one of the sheets strewn on top of the table, there was a lame attempt at a drawing of an octopus. The octopus had a dotted hachimaki tied around its head.

“What is it, Tsukiko?”

“Sensei, that…”

“Yes?”

“Sensei, this…”

“Yes?”

“Sensei.”

“Whatever’s the matter, Tsukiko?”

“How about ‘the roaring sea’?”

I could not seem to bring myself to the heart of the matter. I wasn’t even sure if there was such a thing as “the heart of the matter” between Sensei and me.

“Oh, you mean, ‘Octopus flesh, faintly red, the roaring sea’?”

Sensei paid no attention to my desperate state at all, or else he pretended not to notice, as he wrote the verse on the page. Octopus flesh, faintly red, the roaring sea, he recited as he wrote.

“That’s quite good. Tsukiko, you have a fine aesthetic.”

I murmured a vague reply. Furtively, so that Sensei wouldn’t see, I brought a piece of scrap paper to my lips and wiped away the lipstick. Sensei muttered to himself as he fine-tuned the haiku.

“Tsukiko, what do you think of ‘The roaring sea, octopus flesh, faintly red’?”

There was nothing to think about it. I parted my now colorless lips to murmur another vague response. Having transferred the poem to the page with obvious delight, Sensei now shook his head, somewhat skeptically.

“It’s Basho,” Sensei said. I didn’t have it in me to reply, all I could do was simply nod my head. Basho’s poem is “The darkening sea, a wild duck calls, faintly white.” As he continued writing, Sensei began to lecture. Here, now, in the middle of the night.

You could say that the haiku we have written together is based on Basho’s haiku. It has an interesting broken meter. “The darkening sea, faintly white, a wild duck calls” doesn’t work, because this way “faintly white” carries over to both the sea and the duck’s call. When it comes at the end, it brings the whole haiku to life. Do you understand? See? Tsukiko, go ahead, write another poem.

So, with no choice, I found myself sitting there with Sensei, writing poetry. How did this come about? It was already past two o’clock in the morning. What was the state of affairs that had me counting out syllables on my fingertips and scribbling out mediocre poetry like “Moths at evening, in loneliness, circle the lantern.”

Furious, I wrote out verses. Despite the fact that I had never in my life written haiku or the like, I churned out poems, dozens of them. At last, exhausted, I laid my head down on Sensei’s futon and sprawled out on the tatami. My eyelids closed, and I was powerless to open them. I was barely conscious of my body being dragged (it must have been Sensei doing the dragging) to lie in the middle of the futon, but when I awoke, I could still hear the sound of the waves, and light shone through the opening in the curtains.

Feeling a bit cramped in, I glanced around and found Sensei sleeping beside me. I had been sleeping against his arm as a pillow. I let out a little cry and sat up. Then, without thinking, I fled back to my room. I dove under the covers of my own futon, then quickly leapt back out, paced circles around the room—opening the curtains, closing the curtains—before diving back under the covers and pulling the quilt up over my head. Then, leaping from the futon once again and with my mind totally blank, I returned to Sensei’s room. Sensei was waiting for me there, eyes wide open but still in bed in the dimly lit room with the curtains drawn.

“Tsukiko, there you are,” Sensei said softly as he moved to the edge of the futon.

Yes, I said quietly, diving under the covers. The sense of Sensei washed over me. Sensei, I said, burying my face in his chest. Sensei kissed my hair again and again. He touched my breasts over my yukata, and then not over my yukata.

“Such lovely breasts,” Sensei said. His tone was the same as when he had been explaining Basho’s poetry. I chuckled, and so did Sensei.

“Such lovely breasts. Such a lovely girl you are, Tsukiko,” Sensei said as he caressed my face. He caressed my face, over and over. His caresses made me sleepy. I’m going to fall asleep, Sensei, I said, and he replied, Then go to sleep.

I don’t want to sleep, I murmured, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer. It was as if his palms had some kind of hypnotic effect. I don’t want to sleep. I want to stay here in your arms, I tried to say, but I couldn’t get the words out. I don’t want to… don’t want to… don’t want… to…, at last my utterances broke apart. At some point, Sensei’s hand stopping moving as well. I could hear his light sleeping breath. Sensei, I said, summoning the last of my strength.

Tsukiko, Sensei seemed to rouse himself in reply.

As I drifted off to sleep, I could faintly hear the seagulls’ cries above the sea. Sensei, don’t go to sleep, I tried to say, but I couldn’t. I was being pulled down into a deep sleep, there within Sensei’s arms. I gave in to it. I let myself be dragged down into my own slumber, far removed from Sensei’s slumber. The seagulls called out their cries in the morning light.

I THOUGHT I heard a rustling murmur. It was the camphor tree outside the window. Come here, it sounded like, or Who are you? I stuck my head out the open window to look and see. A number of small birds were flitting about among the branches of the camphor tree. They were fast, and I couldn’t catch sight of them. I only knew they were there because the leaves moved around them as they fluttered about.

In the cherry trees in Sensei’s garden, I’d seen birds before, come to think of it. It was nighttime. The birds would flap their wings a few times and then settle down. These little birds in the camphor tree, they weren’t settling down at all. They just kept fluttering about. And the camphor tree kept murmuring, Come here.

I hadn’t seen Sensei for some time now. Even when I went to Satoru’s place, I still did not come across him sitting there at the counter.

As I listened to the murmur of the branches of the camphor tree, Come here, I decided to go back to Satoru’s that night. Broad beans were now out of season, but surely the first edamame would have arrived. The little birds continued their flitting about, rustling the greenery.

“HIYA-YAKKO,” I ORDERED chilled tofu from my seat at the end of the counter. Sensei wasn’t here. He wasn’t seated on the tatami or at one of the tables either.

Even after I drank down my beer and switched to saké, Sensei still did not appear. The thought of going to his house occurred to me, but that would be presumptuous. While I sat there, distractedly in my cups, I started to grow tired.

I went into the bathroom, and while I sat there, I looked out the small window. As I did my business, I mused that there must be a poem about how depressing it is to look out the window in a toilet and see blue sky. I would say that a window in a toilet would definitely make you depressed.

Maybe I should go to Sensei’s house after all, I was thinking to myself as I came out of the bathroom, and there was Sensei, sitting up straight as usual in the seat two over from mine.

“Here you are, hiya-yakko,” Satoru said as Sensei took the bowl he passed over the counter. Sensei carefully doused it with soy sauce. Gently, he picked some of the tofu with his chopsticks and brought it to his lips.

“It’s tasty,” Sensei said straightaway, facing me. Without any greeting or introduction, he spoke as if continuing a conversation we had been having all along.

“I ate some earlier myself,” I said, and Sensei nodded lightly.

“Tofu is quite special.”

“Yes.”

“It’s good warm. It’s good chilled. It’s good boiled. It’s good fried. It’s versatile,” Sensei said readily, taking a sip from the small saké cup.

C’mon, Sensei, let’s have a drink, it’s been a long time, I said, filling his cup.

All right, Tsukiko, let’s have a drink then. Sensei poured for me in return.

We drank quite heavily that night. More heavily than we’d ever drunk before.

ARE THOSE BOATS out at sea, there, what look like needles lined up along the horizon? Sensei and I fixed our gaze on them for a moment. My eyes got dry as I stared out at them. I quickly lost interest, but Sensei’s gaze was interminably steady.

“Sensei, aren’t you hot?” I asked, but he shook his head.

I wondered where we were. Was this a dream? I had been drinking with Sensei. I had lost count of how many empty saké bottles there had been.

“Must be littleneck clams,” Sensei murmured, shifting his gaze from the horizon to the tidal flat. There were lots of people gathering shellfish in the shallows.

“They’re out of season, but I wonder if you can still find them around here,” Sensei continued.

“Sensei, where are we?” I asked.

“We’re back again,” was all Sensei said in reply.

Back again? I asked, and Sensei repeated, Yes, back again. I find myself here sometimes.

“I prefer the common clam to littleneck clams,” Sensei went on brightly, interrupting me as I was about to ask where this place was that he sometimes went to.