Читать книгу Subduction - Todd Shimoda - Страница 8

At the inn, Mrs. Takahashi served me a pot of tea and dried cuttlefish. I’m not a big fan of dried cuttlefish, especially with tea. With beer, okay, maybe. I chomped politely on a piece, smacked my lips a couple of times.

Recalling her patient file, I asked her if her shoulder had healed. She gave me a another one of her suspicious looks. What did she expect? I am her doctor now. She told me her shoulder was perfectly fine, although after I mentioned it, she started to favor it.

Aki came into the inn. Mrs. Takahashi served him tea and a plate of jerky. He gave the fish a look that said he wasn’t a fan either.

“How is Marui-jima treating you?” he asked me, holding a piece of fish as if it was a roach.

“So far, everything is good.” I didn’t tell him what happened on the boat; after all, it was a little embarrassing getting chased away by an old man. And for some reason I didn’t tell him about meeting Mari Sasaki.

His face pinched closed and he frowned. I guess my answer didn’t satisfy him. Or maybe the tea was bitter. We made some minor small talk about our favorite Tokyo restaurants and other things we missed being away. When that conversational thread died away, he said, “Ready for a beer at Yoshi’s?”

“I am.”

After thanking Mrs. Takahashi, we went out of the inn and up a steep, narrow path crudely worn into the rock. Ahead, perched on a cliff, was a large shack with so many different roof lines and odd angles, it must have been several small shacks tacked together. Weak, yellowish light oozed from the open windows and flowed over the rock like creeping lava.

With a flourish of his hand, Aki ceremoniously ushered me into the bar. Scattered around the establishment were a few tables and mismatched chairs. The walls were constructed of warped planks and decorated with nets, octopus pots, oars, and a splintered rudder. The decorations were so random, it looked like a shipwreck had been picked up from a beach and placed as found.

The three men who had been working on the boat sat on stools with their elbows resting on a bar made from a polished plank of wood salvaged from a boat hull. They gave me a glance and then turned away. One said something I didn’t catch, but the other two nodded in agreement.

The bartender welcomed us in a voice as deep and throaty as a fish market auctioneer. He was bald, short and round, his nose squashed in and off-center. He wore old-fashioned, yet somehow stylish, thick square-rimmed glasses. As if he were lounging at a hot springs resort, he had on a long-sleeve, threadbare, dark blue summer robe with a bamboo leaf brushstroke pattern.

Aki introduced me to Yoshi, the owner of the bar. He said, “So the new doctor has arrived. Let’s hope he’s better than the last one.”

perhaps

a facade

The three boat builders laughed, Ouchi’s laughter dissolving into his feathery cough. Yoshi started to introduce the three when Harada interrupted, telling him they already met me. His tone of voice made it clear he didn’t want another introduction.

Aki ordered beer for us, and Yoshi told us to take a table while he dug into an old ice cooler. Aki and I sat at one of the tables, scratched and worn, the chairs rickety.

Yoshi brought us a large bottle of beer and thick glass tumblers so scratched and worn they could have been dug up from ancient ruins. As he poured I noticed extensive scarring on his wrists. The scars appeared to be from burns rather than cuts.

We thanked him, and Aki and I toasted and took a drink. Beer never tasted so cold and sweet.

“Tell me more about your patient mix-up, if you don’t mind me asking such a personal question,” Aki said. “We have to entertain ourselves here because there is nothing else to do.”

After another greedy swallow of beer, I said, “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not mention the specifics. Let’s just say I didn’t do something I should have.”

“So you made a mistake. Doctors aren’t perfect. The news reports mistakes all the time. Of course, they don’t report the thousands of correct decisions to each mistake. In my opinion, you were punished very harshly for one mistake, however bad it was.”

“Actually, it could have been worse, but the hospital and medical licensing board figured stashing me away here wouldn’t be too damaging. Just a few old people with one foot in the grave, one earthquake away from the other foot in the grave.”

Aki’s brow furrowed. I quickly added, “I’m kidding, of course. I hope I don’t come across as rude and cynical. Of course, I am rude and cynical, I just don’t want to come across that way.”

“Sure, whatever you have to do to survive,” he said. “So what did you leave behind in Tokyo?”

“What?”

“I mean, who did you leave behind. A wife?”

“I’m not married. No steady girlfriend. Okay,” I chuckled, “no girlfriend, not for two or three decades. How about you?”

“I’m married, wife’s name is Mitsuko. One kid, a son, Hajime. He’s seven.”

“I assume you miss them.”

He thought about that for a while, long enough for me to wonder if I’d asked the wrong question. Instead of an emphatic Oh, yes, or Of course, he said, “I assume I do too. But I’ve been moving toward working here for a long time.” He paused again. I used the time to drink some more beer, figured he would get around to telling me what he was thinking. He did: “I was a teenager when the Great Hanshin Earthquake decimated Kobe. I remember staring at the TV as they showed the elevated highway that toppled onto its side. It seemed so unreal, like it was a toy model, only the cars flipped precariously against the guardrail gave it scale.

“Then the reporting jumped to a close-up of a firefighter spraying water on a house engulfed in towering flames. It seemed like a dribble. The reporter explained that water lines were damaged and pressure was low, the fires would have to burn themselves out.

“Then there was another jump to a reporter showing that the main rail line had been cut in half. Bewildered rail employees ran in and out of the station. One stopped to apologize to the reporter that bullet train service was canceled until further notice.

“Then the scene jumped to a reporter in the local seismic center, announcing the quake was a seven, the highest on the Japanese seismic scale. The reporter asked if there would be aftershocks. Undoubtedly, said the seismologist, as the camera began to shake and the reporter and scientist ducked for cover. The death estimate rose into the thousands by nightfall. The fires burned in the darkened city in red, crusty patches like smoldering flesh.”

I said, “The quake didn’t make me want to become a doctor, at least I don’t think so, but I remember the reports of how people died both distressed and fascinated me. That was when I heard about crush syndrome for the first time.” I explained how the muscles build up toxins when they are under the stress of being crushed. When the weight is lifted off them suddenly, the toxins flood the body, attacking organs and forcing the heart into severe arrhythmia. “Just when you think you’re saved, you die in excruciating pain.”

That brought our little party to a standstill.

When we recovered, we ordered another beer and a bowl of rice crackers. The three boat builders argued about what to fix next. Occasionally they would glance at us, speaking in lowered voices as if we were going to steal their secrets of engines, net repair, or bilge pumping.

While we ate and drank, Aki told me about the slow speed of research and development of adequate prediction farther from the Great Hanshin Earthquake. He believed there had to be a better approach than the plodding academic work of his colleagues. So even as a young researcher he pressed his case through proposals and meetings and budgets and other bureaucratic machinations. Then the 2011 Great Eastern Earthquake and Tsunami struck the afternoon of March 11. He redoubled his efforts and he finally received approval. He wasn’t sure if he convinced management that the benefits outweighed the costs, or if they simply tired of him and his unrelenting requests. They gave him a tight deadline and a slim budget to accomplish his work, but it was better than nothing.

The beers and the trip had exhausted me. I sat up straight, took in a deep breath, and asked Aki, “Two years is a long time to be away from home. How did your wife take the news?”

He tensed, frozen in thought. Then he told me.

Convincing Mitsuko of the value of spending so much time away from her and Hajime was difficult. Life would be better in the long run, he told her. At first she would not listen to his justifications of the importance of the work, of how it would save lives. She simply said, “Please, I can’t talk about this right now.”

A week went by. Late one night, over a late dinner and a bottle of wine, she said, “It’s important to you, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but I understand why you don’t want me to do this.”

“Would you miss us?”

“A lot.”

“Then how could you go? I, we, don’t make you happy?”

“You do make me happy. This is something different than happiness. But I can’t explain what it is.”

Mitsuko was quiet for a minute or two, then said, “Someday, I suppose I’ll understand.”

Aki said, “I hope so. I hope I’ll understand it enough to explain it to you.”

“That would be nice. But you will have to explain it to Hajime right now.”

He knew it would be very difficult. But the next day Hajime came home crying after school. They asked him what was wrong and he said his teacher was lying. The teacher told the class there’s a giant catfish named Namazu, who lives in the mud deep in the earth. The catfish likes to play pranks and whenever he moves around too much, he causes an earthquake. Only Kashima, the god who protects Japan from earthquakes, can hold him down. Kashima uses a rock with magical powers over the catfish, but every so often, he relaxes and the catfish gets loose. That’s when we have earthquakes.

Hajime told his teacher that he was wrong. His father was a seismologist who told him that earthquakes come from movements in the earth’s crust and fault lines. The teacher had planned a week’s worth of lessons around the catfish myth. A play, art lessons, reading and writing exercises. Hajime would have none of it, so the teacher ordered him to sit in the corner.

Aki tried to explain “myth,” but Hajime was in the black-and-white stage. Either it’s the truth or it isn’t. Either something is good or it’s bad. But Aki convinced him to play along with the teacher.

When Aki told him that he had to leave for a while, to find out more about earthquakes, Hajime said, “Good. You will show the teacher he is wrong.”

We drank another beer or two. I told Aki I was going to call it a night. He said he would have one more.

“By the way, where are you staying?” I asked him. “Isn’t the inn the only place on the island?”

“I stayed there for a while, but Mrs. Takahashi was always snooping through my things. And there are several abandoned homes to use.”

“Is that where Mari stays, in one of the abandoned homes?”

“She’s not staying at the inn, if that’s what you mean.”

“Just curious.” I finished my beer, thanked him for introducing me to Yoshi’s. The bar owner thanked me profusely on my way out.

While walking on the rough path back to the inn, I realized I had had more to drink than I would have thought. I wished I had a flashlight and someone to lean on. Then I heard what sounded like a voice. I stopped and listened but heard nothing more except the foliage rustling and old homes creaking in the steady breeze. Yet, I couldn’t move and I stood frozen to the spot, breathing shallowly. In my catatonic state, I could feel the island pulsing, breathing, crying a low moan as if it were dying.