Pinball, 1973 (5 page)

The beacon stood at the end of a long jetty that reached out at an angle from the shore. Barely ten feet tall, the beacon wasn’t particularly big. Fishing boats had used its light until the water became so polluted that there weren’t any more fish to be had offshore. Not that there had ever been any harbor to speak of. The fishermen had merely set up winches and makeshift wooden frames along the beach as guide-rails for hoisting the boats up onto the shore by rope. Near the beach lived maybe three fishing families, and every day they’d lay out the morning’s catch of small fry in wooden boxes to dry in the sun behind the sheltering seawall.

The fisher-folk were eventually driven out because 1) the fish had already gone; 2) local residents had become quite vocal about fishermen not belonging in a residential community; and 3) the shanties they’d built unlawfully occupied public property. That all took place in 1962. Who knows where they went? The three shanties were summarily leveled, while the rotting fishing boats, for lack of any other use or place to dump them, were hauled up amidst a seaside grove of trees and children would play there.

Once these fishing boats were out of the picture, only an occasional yacht would sail close to shore, or perhaps a freighter might weigh emergency anchor in dense fog or during a typhoon warning, but very few vessels ever availed themselves of the beacon any more. And even if they did, there was only an outside chance it would really make much difference.

Weathered to a dark patina, the beacon was molded in a bell-shape. Or else it was a brooding man, seen from behind. When the sun went down, and touches of blue filtered into the fading afterglow, an orange lamp would light up in the knob of the bell and slowly begin to revolve. The beacon always pinpointed the onset of nightfall exactly. Against the most gorgeous sunsets or in dim drizzling mist, the beacon was ever true to its appointed moment: that precise instant in the alchemy of light and dark when darkness tipped the scales.

So many times in childhood had the Rat headed out to the beach at dusk just to catch that moment. Toward late afternoon, as the waves died down he’d walk along the jetty out to the beacon, counting the weatherworn paving stones as he went. Beneath the surface of the unbelievably crystalline water he could see schools of the slender fish of early autumn. As if in search of something, they’d trace looping arcs beside the jetty, before shooting off into deeper waters.

When he finally reached the beacon, he’d sit down on the end of the jetty and slowly gaze out over the water. Thin cloud trails brushed across a sky of perfect blue as far as the eye could see. A boundless deep blue, so deep it set the boy’s legs trembling. It was as if he were shaking with fear. The scent of the sea, the tinge of the wind, everything was amazingly vivid. He’d take his time drinking in the vista, letting it slowly but surely spread through him, then just as slowly he’d turn to look behind him. Now it was his own world he observed, set off utterly in the distance by this depth of sea. Back there, the white-sand beach and seawall, the green pine woods tamped down to a low-lying expanse, and behind that the blue-gray hills ascending skyward.

Off in the distance to the left was a gigantic harbor. He could just make out the massive cranes, floating docks, boxlike warehouses, freighters, and high-rise buildings. To the right, curving inland along the shoreline, was a quiet residential area and yacht harbor, and a block of old sake storehouses; then beyond that, the industrial sector lay with its rows of spherical tanks and tall smokestacks, their white smoke drifting lazily across the sky. Further still, for all the ten¬year-old Rat knew, you dropped off the edge of the world.

Throughout his childhood from spring to early autumn, the Rat made these little excursions out to the beacon. On days when the breakers were high, his feet would get all wet from the spray, the wind moaning overhead as he padded along, slipping time and again on the mossy stones. He knew that path out to the beacon better than anything. And while he sat there on the end of the jetty, he’d let the sound of the waves fill his ears, watch the clouds and schools of tiny sweetfish, take pebbles he’d pocketed on the way and throw them out into the deep.

Then when dusk began to settle he would retrace his steps, back to his own world. And on the way home, a loneliness would always claim his heart. He could never quite get a grip on what it was. It just seemed that whatever lay waiting “out there” was all too vast, too overwhelming for him to possibly ever make a dent in.

A woman he knew lived near the jetty. Whenever the Rat passed the spot, he recalled that aimless feeling of childhood, the scent of those twilights. He stopped his car on the shore road, and cut through the sparse tract of pines that had been planted on the beach to hold back the sand. The dry sand rasped beneath his feet.

They’d built apartment houses where the fishermen’s shacks had been. The canna grass in front of the apartments had, by the looks of it, had the life tramped out of it. Her apartment was on the second floor where, on windy days, a fine spray of sand would pepper the windowpanes. She had a pretty little apartment with southern exposure, but for some reason a brooding air hung over the place.

It’s the sea, she said. It’s too close. The tides, the wind, the roar of the waves, that fishy smell. Everything.

There’s no fishy smell, the Rat said.

There is, she snapped, bringing the blinds crashing down with a pull of the cord. If you lived here, you’d know.

Sand struck the window.

In the apartment house I lived in as a student, nobody had a phone. I doubt whether some of us even had one measly eraser. All the same, out in front of the superintendent’s apartment we’d stationed a low table lifted from the nearby elementary school, and on that sat a pink pay phone, the one and only telephone in the entire apartment house. So no one gave the least thought to switch-panels or what have you. It was a peaceful world in peaceful times.

There was never anybody in the superintendent’s apartment, so whenever the phone rang, one of us residents would have to answer it, then run and call the person. Of course, when nobody felt like getting it (like at two in the morning, for instance), the phone would go unanswered. It would ring on and on (my highest count was thirty-two times), raging like an elephant that knew its time had come. Then it would die. Literally and truly, it would die. As the last ring trailed off down the hall into the night, a sudden hush would fall over the place. A disturbing, ominous hush. Everyone would be holding their breath under the covers of their futon thinking about the call that had died.

Phone calls in the dead of night never brought good news. Somebody would pick up the receiver, and would begin softly. “Can we not talk about this?... Can’t you see, it’s not like that.... So what, you say? That’s just how it’s gotta be, right? Guess I’m just tired. . . . Of course, I’m sorry and all that.... So you see... Like I get the picture, I get it, so just let me think it over a bit, okay?... I just can’t find the words over the phone...”

Everybody was up to here in troubles, it seemed. Trouble fell like rain from the heavens, and we just couldn’t get enough of it. We went around picking up the stuff and cramming our pockets full of it. Even now I can’t figure out why we persisted in doing that. Maybe we mistook it for something else.

Sometimes we’d even get telegrams. Four o’clock in the morning a bike would pull up to the entrance, followed by footsteps tramping down the hall. Then there’d come a knock on someone’s door. A pounding thud thud that always seemed to announce the arrival of the God of Death. Any number of people were cutting their lives short, going out of their heads, burying their hearts in the sludge of time, burning up their bodies with pointless thinking, making trouble for one another. Nineteen seventy was that kind of year. If indeed the human species was created to elevate itself dialectically, then that year had to have been some kind of object lesson.

* * *

I lived on the first floor next to the superintendent’s apartment, and this girl with long hair lived upstairs by the stairwell. She was the house champion at receiving phone calls, and it somehow fell to me to be perpetually running up and down those fifteen slippery steps. And let me tell you, did she ever get all kinds of phone calls. Polite voices, officious voices, touchingly sad voices, overbearing voices, and they’d all be asking for her by name. I have long since managed to drive that name out of mind; I only remember it was a pathetically ordinary name.

She would always talk into the receiver in a low, tired monotone. A bare whisper of a voice you could hardly make out. She was pretty enough, I suppose, yet there was something dark and moody about her face. We’d pass on the street sometimes, but she’d never say a thing. She’d be walking with such an intense expression she might have been trudging down a path though the deepest jungle astride a white elephant.

* * *

She lived in the apartment house maybe half a year. The half-year from the beginning of autumn to the end of winter.

I’d answer the phone, climb the stairs, knock on her door, and call out, “Telephone!” Then, after a slight pause would come “Thanks.” That’s all I ever heard her say, “Thanks.” But for that matter, I never said anything either except ‘‘Telephone.”

For me, it was a lonely season. Whenever I got home and took off my clothes, I felt as if any second my bones would burst through my skin. Like some unknown force inside me had taken a wrong turn somewhere, and was leading me off in some strange direction to another world.

The phone would ring. And I’d think, somebody’s got something to tell somebody else. I almost never got calls myself. There wasn’t anybody who’d have anything to say to me, at least not anybody I’d want to hear from.

Everyone had by then begun to live according to systems of their own making. If theirs were very different from mine, I’d get irritable; if they were too much alike, I’d get depressed. That’s pretty much how it went.

* * *

The last phone call I took for her was at the end of winter. A bright, clear Saturday morning, the beginning of March. By “morning,” I mean around ten o’clock, when the winter sun cast its clear light into every corner of my tiny room. I vaguely heard it ringing in my head as I lazed about, absently gazing down on the field of cabbages outside my bedside window. Patches of snow here and there on the dark black soil glistened like mirror-bright pockets of water. The last snow left by the last cold wave of the season.

Ten rings and no takers. The ringing stopped. Then not five minutes later it started again. Disgruntled, I threw on a cardigan over my pajamas, opened the door, and picked up the receiver.

“Miss ______, please,” came a male voice. A flat, unmodulated voice; an utterly featureless voice you couldn’t pin down if you tried. I improvised some reply, then slowly climbed the stairs to knock on her door.

“Telephone!”

“..... Thanks.”

I returned to my room, stretched out on my bed and stared up at the ceiling. I heard her come downstairs and start talking in her usual dry whisper. It was a short call as hers went. Maybe fifteen seconds. There was the sound of her hanging up, then silence. Not even any footsteps.

Finally, after a longish pause, I heard the slow approach of footsteps, followed by a knocking on my door. Two knocks, time for one deep breath, then twice again.

On opening the door, I found her standing there in a bulky white sweater and jeans. For a second I thought I’d given her someone else’s call, but she didn’t say a word. She just stood there, arms folded tightly across her chest, shivering. She gave me this look – she might have been watching from a lifeboat as the ship went down. Or maybe it was the other way around.

“Can I come in? I could catch my death of cold out here.”

Not knowing what to expect, I ushered her in and shut the door. She sat down in front of the heater, warming her hands as she gave the room the once-over.

“Awful empty room you’ve got here.”

I nodded. It was practically empty. Just a bed by the window. Too big for a single, too small for a semi-double. Whatever it was, the bed wasn’t something I’d bought for myself. A friend gave it to me. I really couldn’t imagine why he’d give me a bed; I wasn’t even that close to him. Hardly ever spoke to the guy. The son of a rich family from somewhere, he was beaten up in the school court-yard by louts from some other political faction, had his face kicked in with work boots, almost lost an eye, and withdrew from school. He was in convulsions the whole time I was walking him to the university infirmary, a real sorry sight. Some days later he said it was back home for him, and he gave me the bed.

“I bet you can’t even fix yourself anything hot to drink,” she said. I shook my head. I didn’t have a thing. No coffee, no tea, no bancha. I didn’t even have a kettle. Just one small saucepan I used every morning to heat water for shaving. She sighed and stood-up saying wait there, she’d be right back. She left the room, and five minutes later returned with a cardboard box under each arm. In the boxes were a half-year’s supply of teabags and green tea, two boxes of biscuits, granulated sugar, a thermos pot, and a complete set of dishes, plus two Snoopy tumblers to boot. She plunked the boxes down on the bed, and boiled water for the thermos.

“How on earth do you manage to survive? You’re practically Robinson Crusoe here!”

“No, it’s not as much fun as that.”

“I should think not.”

I shut up and drank my hot tea.

“I’m giving you all this.”

I choked on the tea. “You’re what?”

“You had to answer so many of my phone calls. This is thanks.”

“But what about you, don’t you need this stuff?”

She shook her head repeatedly. “I’m moving tomorrow, so I won’t be needing anything.”

I gave the situation a silent moment’s thought, but couldn’t imagine what had happened.

“Good news? Bad news?”

“None too good, I’m afraid. I’m going to have to quit school and return to the old homefront.”

The roomful of winter sunshine clouded over, then brightened again.