Читать книгу Made In Japan - S. Parks J. - Страница 23

‘Un bel di, vedremo’

−Puccini, Madama Butterfly

Imperial Palace Hotel, Tokyo, 1989

Naomi was getting used to the heavy thread count of the cotton sheets on her bare skin. Changed daily, they barely bore a trace of his heavy sleep. At first, the starched arrival of room service, bringing so many scratched and buffeted chaffing dishes, had delighted them, though it had never been possible to eat it all. They had tired of the cloying delights of the international hotel and Josh now preferred to eat breakfast elsewhere, partly because he wanted the company bill to bear scrutiny, and because they had lived in the hotel for so much longer than expected.

Naomi was charged with finding a rental apartment and so far they had failed to agree on anything suitable. This morning they were again going to meet the agent who would find their rental in the city. Though Tokyo housed thirty eight million people there should be a good deal of choice out there for their budget; it was just that she didn’t speak the language and she had no idea where the signs might direct her.

Her morning start had become increasingly languid when the rest of her day stretched to a distant vanishing point.

Today, as he slipped the last limb into his blue suit, Josh warned, ‘It’ll be busy so do leave early.’

And, like a skimming stone, he threw the glossy city plan entitled ‘The Detailed Map of Tokyo for Business Man and Tourist’ onto the bed beside her.

‘I am neither.’ She reached to catch it and was genuinely daunted by the question of what lay between the two but Josh had no time for her existential meanderings this morning and was keen she first found them a place to live.

‘I’ll meet you there.’ He dropped a kiss on the crown of her head and left her alone with her question. He was generally more comfortable with imperatives and they would talk over breakfast.

In the three weeks since their arrival she recognized her rootless existence had begun to strain the relationship that she had cherished so much as to drop everything and follow him to nurture it. The heavy closure of the fire-retardant door reduced her to the privileged isolation of an inmate of a luxury Wandsworth prison. And this brought back thoughts of her home in Clapham. Annoyed at her own distortion of the privileges she enjoyed, it brought her once again to ask why she had made the rash decision to leave her course at the Architect’s Institute in London and follow him to Tokyo.

If she did not leave the room soon she would suffocate. She threw the map aside and leapt out of bed. She left the lobby in summer whites, prompting the hotel staff to whisper about the ghost on the 47th floor who kept time like no other guest among the business clients in the hotel.

At Shibuya Station she was caught in the spring tide of dark heads, where a crowd the size of a billing at the Hammersmith Palais negotiated six or more optional exits. She was carried across the eddying tide of people to a pillar where the current divided as if at the foot of a bridge spanning a river in spate. She retrieved the city plan wedged in her bag; Josh would be waiting for her. A master in origami had ingeniously folded the map and once opened it clung unhelpfully to her body as a set of streamers escaped on a strong downdraft. She gave up trying to scan the oscillating paper as it flapped aggressively at her face and tore as she tried to restrain it. He had given her a couple of landmarks to head for; first was the Hachikō Statue on the south-west side of the station. Below her a grid of crossings led like an Escher print to every point on the compass in a Kafkaesque joke. From one of the branches she should take the hill up to where they were to meet. She checked her watch and it was nearing 9.30 a.m. She was lost for a lead and he would be exasperated again. She closed her eyes.

Though now used to the city’s disregard for personal space, she became aware of an individual standing beside her.

‘You lost? Want some help?’

The girl was about her age, unusually tall and her hair was styled in a short bob. Naomi began folding the map, very roughly.

‘I’m trying to find the Hachikō exit.’

Her short, close-fitting cotton dress was covered in old roses. And she led her towards the exit.

‘You know about Hachikō?’

All it took was a shake of the head and she started on a story as if she were a complementary city guide.

‘Every day an old professor left his dog outside the station for the day when he commuted.’

Her English was good. She probably made a habit of picking up lost souls for language practice. A dog story. Naomi looked at her watch.

The girl upped her pace and continued her explanation.

‘He was old and—’ They scuttled down a flight of stairs on a second wave of commuters ‘—one time he didn’t return and the dog waited for his master for days.’

They emerged from the station at street level, to an obscured sun. Beneath animated screen-clad buildings the massing crowds were cowed in the electronic din of commercialism. Where would Josh be waiting? It was the most kinetic urban space she had ever seen and she drew her attention back to the girl, glad for a moment to have a guide.

Her voice rose against the half-truths of advertisement jingles. ‘The professor had suffered a seizure and he died and never returned.’

They came to a halt in front of a statue of a dog.

‘Here is Hachikō. This is your Hachikō exit.’

Naomi stopped out of politeness but had an eye on the next waymark as a pedestrian claxon sounded on the massive crossing. She hoped to make the lights but she could see the crowd thinning and the last stragglers beginning to run to beat the change. She would miss it anyway.

‘The emperor heard about this act of loyalty so admired in the Japanese character and he agreed to this statue.’

The girl followed her eyes towards the sea of people.

‘Where do you go from here?’ The girl doll tugged at the line of her sharp fringe.

The lights changed. Naomi’s mounting anxiety dissipated as she surrendered to being very late.

‘It’s near PARCO, Udagawacho,’ she said, reading the biro on the back of her hand.

‘I know the store. I’ll go that way with you.

She might be difficult to shake off, Naomi thought.

‘Is it out of your way?’

‘I guess not.’

Waiting for the sea of people to move from the edge of the road. Languid little questions followed as they made their way through the crowd.

‘Yes, almost a month. An amazing city. ‘

The Japanese girl was time-easy and very laid back. It was late; it would rile him but there was little she could do about it. Her responses were short.

‘An architect but not qualified. And you?’

‘PR. My friend is an architect. You should meet him.’

She might be the type who knew everyone. Over the sea of heads a digitized figure cartwheeled across the face of five buildings as the accumulation of bodies waiting to cross deepened.

The girl beside her bridged the alien space between her and the crowd, somehow emphasizing it. The otherness of the place was daunting. Had she really committed to living here? They crossed to walk up the hill together. At the Seibu Store a six-foot seed pod filled a window and shook like a silent maraca; the first sign, in the urban landscape, that was organic. She wished the seed would grow to a pantomime vine and she could climb it and escape.

‘PARCO,’ the girl announced.

‘Thanks.’ Naomi hoped it wouldn’t be too difficult to shake free of her politely.

‘I’ll leave you here.’ The girl began backing off easily, waving as she left.

‘Thanks. Thanks so much,’ Naomi yelled back.

And then, on a second thought, the girl turned again, taking a paper from her clutch.

‘I’m Miho. Give me a call sometime.’