One
"The mountains are the record of the mother's heartbeat captured in the molten rock as she gave birth to Japan." "The mist on the breeze is the cloth that eases her fevered brow." Hideaki Tomishige listened to the disembodied voices in his mind. They sounded like an authentic memory. Yet he couldn't remember when or how he first heard them. Like so much of what was happening, he accepted his fate without understanding. Through the train window, the faint rain illumined and obscured the local mountains. A thin drop sliced against the plexiglas on a diagonal, the momentum of its fall breaking it into a second joint, and then a third in a jagged squiggle that resembled the shape of a bamboo stalk. The recorded voice announcing his hometown station was another memory come back to life. How many times had he heard that message as a child? Today it was the same as it was, recorded once and played over and over throughout time. The tinny voice was a perfect complement to the metallic taste in his mouth. He told his wife he was attending a conference at the Prefectural ceramics laboratory … but the truth was he had lost his job and hadn't the heart to tell her. He didn't invent the lie, it came out as he groped for a diversion. The train began it's labor of coming to a halt, applying a steel grip against its own momentum. The passengers leaned against the forces coming into play around them. Businessmen and travelers began their jerky ritual of getting their things together. Hideaki leaned into the violence halfheartedly. His world had spun dangerously out of control and he felt buffeted from all sides. The train shrieked to a stop. The important people and the conspicuously harried travelers were off the train like a shot, trying to recapture some of the lost acceleration. The students filed out behind them, laughing and jostling; the seniors were just starting to move when Hideaki got up and lifted his single bag off the overhead rack. On the platform, a flood of dissonant memory swept him away. Here was a new bank of vending machines, there he saw an awning repainted for the thirtieth year. Down the tracks a rusted sign warned children to stay out of the tunnel, just as impotent as it was decades before. He surveyed the station of today. Remembering what it used to be like, he tried to reconcile the two. It was like being in two different places at the same time. Or more exact, being in two different times in the same place. He wondered if he'd run into people from his childhood. The experience would probably be the same, seeing the person all grown up, and remembering them as they were at the same time. Would they see him the same way? He wasn't sure, after all, the friend he was really hoping to see, the one he used to have such wonderful conversations with, he'd always been the one who said he had a special gift of sight. A sight that allowed him to see things as they are, as they were and as they could be, all at the same time. Outside the station, a line of sleek black taxicabs purred in the drizzle. The drivers cast their lazy, predatory glances out of the corners of their eyes at the passengers. Hideaki decided to walk the eight or nine kilometers. He didn't want to get reacquainted with his hometown over banal patter in a torrent of stale air. Along the station road, past dozens of bicycles parked in an insane jumble, the mountains lured Hideaki's attention from his nostalgic stroll. As he walked, peeking into the rear doors of shops and restaurants, the mountains called. No matter how much he tried to remember the place where he had known so many fond and painful memories, the mountains called. Answering the call as he had so many times before, he understood something. He had probably always known it but had never gotten his mind around it. There were two sets of mountains. The first were those in the distance. They appeared as mountains should, potent and dormant at the same time. From his earliest memories they had always spoken to him. On a bright day they were raw in their verdant power. Other days, like today, draped in a misted shroud, there was a promise of something waiting to be born. Secreted from the world until the correct moment. But no matter under what sky they manifested, they called. The second set of mountains were the ones you inhabited after you answered the call and found yourself within their protective folds. These were the mountains that challenged you, always ready to reveal something wondrous over the next hill, but that you never encountered. Instead there was always some other surprise, unexpected, but more delightful due to its alien nature. This set of mountains was a world unto itself, sometimes familiar, sometime revealing mysteries just making their appearance on Earth. He turned back his hood to get a clearer vision of the mountains he was walking toward. Not only were there two sets, they existed independently. From a distance you experienced the first; among their rocky muscles, you inhabited the second. They never coexisted. The alluring vision never occurred to you while scrambling over the contoured physique. For the first time he understood the importance of their dual nature – without the vision, the climber would never take the risk. He walked faster, chewing up the slick asphalt along his journey into the past. As he rounded the final bend in the road before the entrance to the Prefectural park, there was a ramshackle roadside vegetable stand, that had definitely not been here when he was a child. With his pants shiny and heavy from the mist it was a welcome oasis. Even ten meters away he saw the owner was a cheerful sort, despite the weather and the lack of customers. The vegetable man was busy moving crates here and there, packing tomatoes in small bundles and propping up signs the breeze had knocked down. “Hello,” he called out when he saw Hideaki approach, offering a small folding chair that had been tucked away. Hideaki sat under the awning, accepting a small bunch of loquats and hot fruit tea. The vegetable man, in white rubber boots and blue bandanna, talked in short bursts as he stayed busy. The spirit of the man was in everything – the goods and displays, even in the three-walled structure that looked as if it would collapse with the swish of a strong wind. "I lived here many years ago. I don't remember a roadside stand here." The vegetable man looked up. “No, no. I just started here three years ago. This land was in my family and I decided it needed a vegetable stand." Talking to Hideaki was just another detail in his brisk repertoire. Hideaki nodded, contemplating his cup. Everything in the shack was junk. But the vegetable man kept touching and shifting everything in a way that transformed it into an art exhibit of raw food and handmade goods. “You seem to know what you're doing.” The vegetable man poured water from a galvanized pail over a mesh bag of cherries. The cherries sat on a large bamboo platter seated on a plastic pail. He let the water run through the dark weave and shook the excess off the glistening fruit and put the platter on a workbench. "Thank you, you are very kind. I am new to this work, but I enjoy it very much." His eyes glistened, too. Their color matched the slate grey of the lowering sky. Something about those slate grey eyes was familiar. But searching for the memory was like trying to follow the shadow of a fish beneath a frozen pond. The vegetable man dunked several bunches of onions in the swollen plastic bucket, turning the water muddy. He pulled them out by their stringy tails and arranged them in a semi-circle around the cherries on the bamboo platter. "What did you do before?" The vegetable seller was sweeping excess water and silt with an old fashioned hand-made broom. "I was salary man. But I went overseas for three years. When I came back, lifetime job didn't look so good." He laughed as he swept. "I quit. Start this vegetable stand with savings." He stroked his bushy mustache and goatee. "I grow many of these vegetables on other family land." He tugged at his beard. "Grow this, too." Hideaki laughed with him. The recent memory of his firing didn't feel so bad just now, but there was still the dark shadows in the recesses of his mind. Time to move on. The vegetable man offered him half an orange as he got up to leave. Hideaki thanked him and bowed deeply. "Where are you going?" "To look for an old friend." Hideaki said it without knowing who he meant. His pants were still wet, but they didn't seem as much a nuisance. He felt lighter as he walked along the road. Making the turn into the park he saw a small family pottery. The sliding doors were open to the rain and women were sitting at workbenches painting orange bowls. He stopped to listen to their pointless chatter, to hear the sounds of a pottery. And to smell the clay. In the rain, clay smells like it does when dug from the earth. And the rain mixes with the smell, making it a chalky taste. The smell of clay, that is also a taste, is tantalizing, even to those who know it creates a hunger that can't be sated. It's an atmosphere created by the clay's presence. A presence in the air, in your nostrils, on your tongue, even on the watery surface of your eyes that engulfs you, creating a mold to cast an impression of your character. The familiar smell reassured Hideaki. Continuing his climb he grabbed a cluster of loquats from a branch hanging over the road. He clutched the fruit close to his chest, like a little kid trying not to get caught. He peeled a single fruit and put the whole yellow orb into his mouth, squishing the sweet meat between his teeth, separating the seeds to one side with his tongue. He could hear his mother's voice, 'Why do you have to eat it all at once?' she would say, and he would make a funny, stuff-mouthed face at her. He kept chewing, careful not to swallow the seeds as he heard her again, 'Don't choke on the seeds!' A royal blue-tailed salamander stood on the edge of the road. Hideaki stopped short, unable to resist the memory of childhood sport. The salamander sensed him, tightening its crouch. Hideaki swallowed the rest of the fruit, moving one of the seeds to the center of his tongue. The salamander remained. Hideaki leaned forward, one hand on his knee, trying to shorten the distance without making the lizard bolt. The salamander's neck bulged, a fat, distinct beat, its iridescent blue tail waved a lazy quarter curve. Hideaki breathed in through his nostrils. The lizard's neck bulged again. He pushed the seed to the tip of his tongue. The salamander's four knees flexed. Hideaki fired. The salamander was ready to leap when BAM! the loquat pit connected. Perplexed, the lizard hesitated, then darted into the bush. Hideaki let go his first childlike laugh in years and went on spitting seeds as he looked up at the clouds above the three peaks. |