Kafka on the Shore (26 page)

"There's a clean set of sheets, and enough in the fridge to tide you over. Milk, some fruit, vegetables, butter, ham, cheese... Not enough for a decent meal, but enough for a sandwich or salad at least. If you want something more, I suggest takeout, or going out to eat. For laundry you'll have to make do with rinsing things out in the bathroom, I'm afraid. Let's see, have I forgotten anything?"

"Where does Miss Saeki usually work?"

Oshima points to the ceiling. "You remember that room on the second floor you saw on the tour? She's always there, writing. If I have to go out for a while she sometimes comes downstairs and takes over at the counter. But unless she's got something to do on the first floor, that's where you'll find her."

I nod.

"I'll be here tomorrow before ten to run through what your job involves. Until then, just relax and take it easy."

"Thanks for everything," I tell him.

"My pleasure," he replies.

After he leaves I unload my backpack. Arrange my meager assortment of clothes in the dresser, hang up my shirts and jacket, line up my notebook and pens on the desk, put my toiletries in the bathroom, and finally stow the pack itself in the closet.

The room doesn't have any decorations at all, except for a small oil painting, a realistic portrait of a young boy by the shore. Not bad, I decide—maybe done by somebody famous? The boy looks about twelve or so, and he's wearing a white sunhat and sitting on a small deck chair. His elbow's on one of the arms of the chair, his chin resting in his hand. He looks a little sad, but kind of pleased, too. A black German shepherd sits next to the boy, like he's guarding him. In the background is the sea and a couple of other people, but they're too far away to make out their faces. A small island's visible, and a few fist-shaped clouds float over the water. Most definitely a summer scene. I sit down at the desk and gaze at the painting for a while. I start to feel like I can hear the crash of waves, the salty smell of the sea.

The boy in the painting might be the boy who used to live in this room, the young man Miss Saeki loved. The one who got caught up in the student movement clashes and was pointlessly beaten to death. There's no saying for sure, but I'm betting that's who it is. The scenery looks a lot like what you see around here, for one thing. If that's the case, then it must be from about forty years ago—an eternity to somebody like me. I try imagining myself in forty years, but it's like trying to picture what lies beyond the universe.

The next morning Oshima arrives and shows me what I'm supposed to do to get the library ready to open. First I have to unlock and open the windows to air out the rooms, make a quick pass with the vacuum cleaner, wipe the desktops, change the flowers in the vases, turn on the lights, occasionally sprinkle water in the garden to keep down the dust, and, when the time comes, open the door. At closing time it's the same procedure in reverse—lock the windows, wipe the desktops again, turn off the lights, and close the front door.

"There's not much for anybody to steal here, so maybe we don't need to be so worried about always locking the door," Oshima tells me. "But Miss Saeki and I don't like things done sloppily. So we try to do things by the book. This is our house, so we treat it with respect. And I hope you'll do the same."

I nod.

Next he shows me what to do at the reception desk, how to help out people coming to use the library.

"For the time being you should just sit next to me and watch what I do. It's not all that hard. If something ever comes up you can't handle, just go upstairs and ask Miss Saeki. She'll take care of it."

Miss Saeki shows up just before eleven. Her Volkswagen Golf makes a distinctive roar as it pulls up, and I can tell right away it's her. She parks, comes in through the back door, and greets the two of us. "Morning," she says. "Good morning,"

we answer back. That's the extent of our conversation. Miss Saeki has on a navy blue short-sleeved dress, a cotton coat in her arms, a shoulder bag. Nothing you could call an accessory, and hardly a hint of makeup. Still, there's something about her that's dazzling.

She glances at me standing next to Oshima and looks for a moment like she wants to say something, but doesn't. She merely beams a slight smile in my direction and walks up to her office on the second floor.

"Not to worry," Oshima assures me. "She has no problem with your being here.

She just doesn't go in for a lot of small talk, that's all."

At eleven Oshima and I open up the main door, but nobody comes for a while.

During the interval he shows me how to use the computers to search for books. They're typical library PCs I'm already familiar with. Next he shows me how to arrange all the catalog cards. Every day the library receives copies of newly published books, and one of the other tasks is to log in these new arrivals by hand.

Around eleven-thirty two women come in together, wearing identical jeans. The shorter of the two has cropped hair like a swimmer, while the taller woman wears her hair pulled back. Both of them have on jogging shoes, one a pair of Nikes, the other Asics. The tall one looks around forty or so, with glasses and a checked shirt, the shorter woman, a decade younger, is wearing a white blouse. Both have little daypacks on, and expressions as gloomy as a cloudy day. Neither one says very much. Oshima relieves them of their packs at the entrance, and the women, looking displeased, extract notebooks and pens before leaving them.

The women go through the library, checking the stacks one by one, earnestly flipping through the card catalog, occasionally taking notes. They don't read anything or sit down. They act less like people using a library than inspectors from the tax office checking a company's inventory. Oshima and I can't figure out who they are or what they could possibly be up to. He gives me a significant look and shrugs. To put it mildly, I don't have a good feeling about this.

At noon, while Oshima goes out to the garden to eat his lunch, I fill in for him behind the counter.

"Excuse me, but I have a question," one of the women comes over and says. The tall one. Her tone of voice is hard and unyielding, like a loaf of bread someone forgot on the back of a shelf.

"Yes, what can I do for you?"

She frowns and looks at me like I'm some off-kilter picture frame. "Aren't you a high school student?"

"Yes, that's right. I'm a trainee," I answer.

"Is there one of your superiors I could talk to?"

I go out to the garden to get Oshima. He slowly takes a sip of coffee to dissolve the bite of food in his mouth, brushes the crumbs from his lap, and comes inside.

"Yes, may I help you?" Oshima asks her amiably.

"Just to let you know, we're investigating public cultural facilities in the entire country from a woman's point of view, looking at ease of use, fair access, and other issues," she says. "Our group is doing a yearlong investigation and plans to publish a public report on our findings. A large number of women are involved in this project, and the two of us happen to be in charge of this region."

"If you don't mind," Oshima says, "would you tell me the name of this organization?"

The woman whips out a business card and passes it to him.

His expression unchanged, Oshima reads it carefully, places it on the counter, then looks up with a blazing smile and gazes intently at the woman. A first-class smile guaranteed to make any red-blooded woman blush.

This woman, strangely enough, doesn't react, not even a twitch of an eyebrow.

"What we've concluded is that, unfortunately, this library has several issues that need to be addressed."

"From the viewpoint of women, is what you're saying," Oshima commented.

"Correct, from the viewpoint of women," the woman answers. She clears her throat. "And we'd like to bring this up with your administration and hear their response, so if you don't mind?"

"We don't have something as fancy as an administration, but I would be happy to listen to you."

"Well, first of all you have no restroom set aside for women. That's correct, isn't it?"

"Yes, that's right. There's no women's restroom in this library. We have one restroom for both men and women."

"Even if you are a private facility, since you're open to the public don't you think—in principle—that you should provide separate restrooms for men and women?"

"In principle?" Oshima says.

"Correct. Shared facilities give rise to all sorts of harassment. According to our survey, the majority of women are reluctant to use shared bathrooms. This is a clear case of neglect of your female patrons."

"Neglect...," Oshima says, and makes a face like he's swallowed something bitter by mistake. He doesn't much like the sound of the word, it would seem.

"An intentional oversight."

"Intentional oversight," he repeats, and gives some thought to this clumsy phrase.

"So what is your reaction to all this?" the woman asks, barely containing her irritation.

"As you can see," Oshima says, "we're a very small library. And unfortunately we don't have the space for separate restrooms. Naturally it would be better to have separate facilities, but none of our patrons have ever complained. For better or for worse, our library doesn't get very crowded. If you'd like to pursue this issue of separate restrooms further, I suggest you go to the Boeing headquarters in Seattle and address the issue of restrooms on 747s. A 747's much bigger than our little library, and much more crowded. As far as I'm aware, all restrooms on passenger jets are shared by men and women."

The tall woman frowns at him severely, her cheekbones jutting forward and her glasses riding up her nose. "We are not investigating airplanes .747s are beside the point."

"Wouldn't restrooms in both jets and in our library—in principle—give rise to the same sorts of problems?"

"We are investigating, one by one, public facilities. We're not here to argue over principles."

Oshima's supple smile never fades during this exchange. "Is that so? I could have sworn that principles were exactly what we were discussing."

The woman realizes she's blown it. She blushes a bit, though not because of Oshima's sex appeal. She tries a different tack. "At any rate, jumbo jets are irrelevant here. Don't try to confuse the issue."

"Understood. No more airplanes," Oshima promises. "We'll bring things down to earth."

The woman glares at him and, after taking a breath, forges on. "One other issue I'd like to raise is how you have authors here separated by sex."

"Yes, that's right. The person who was in charge before us cataloged these and for whatever reason divided them into male and female. We were thinking of recataloging all of them, but haven't been able to as of yet."

"We're not criticizing you for this," she says.

Oshima tilts his head slightly.

"The problem, though, is that in all categories male authors are listed before female authors," she says. "To our way of thinking this violates the principle of sexual equality and is totally unfair."

Oshima picks up her business card again, runs his eyes over it, then lays it back down on the counter. "Ms. Soga," he begins, "when they called the role in school your name would have come before Ms. Tanaka, and after Ms. Sekine. Did you file a complaint about that? Did you object, asking them to reverse the order? Does G get angry because it follows F in the alphabet? Does page 68 in a book start a revolution just because it follows 67?"

"That's not the point," she says angrily. "You're intentionally trying to confuse the issue."

Hearing this, the shorter woman, who'd been standing in front of a stack taking notes, races over.

"Intentionally trying to confuse the issue," Oshima repeats, like he's underlining the woman's words.

"Are you denying it?"

"That's a red herring," Oshima replies.

The woman named Soga stands there, mouth slightly ajar, not saying a word.

"In English there's this expression red herring. Something that's very interesting but leads you astray from the main topic. I'm afraid I haven't looked into why they use that kind of expression, though."

"Herrings or mackerel or whatever, you're dodging the issue."

"Actually what I'm doing is shifting the analogy," Oshima says. "One of the most effective methods of argument, according to Aristotle. The citizens of ancient Athens enjoyed using this kind of intellectual trick very much. It's a shame, though, that at the time women weren't included in the definition of 'citizen.'"

"Are you making fun of us?"

Oshima shakes his head. "Look, what I'm trying to get across is this: I'm sure there are many more effective ways of making sure that Japanese women's rights are guaranteed than sniffing around a small library in a little town and complaining about the restrooms and the card catalog. We're doing our level best to see that this modest library of ours helps the community. We've assembled an outstanding collection for people who love books. And we do our utmost to put a human face on all our dealings with the public. You might not be aware of it, but this library's collection of poetry-related material from the 1910s to the mid-Showa period is nationally recognized. Of course there are things we could do better, and limits to what we can accomplish. But rest assured we're doing our very best. I think it'd be a whole lot better if you focus on what we do well than what we're unable to do. Isn't that what you call fair?"

The tall woman looks at the short one, who looks back up at her and opens her mouth for the first time. "You've just been evading the point, mouthing empty arguments that avoid taking responsibility," she says in a really high-pitched voice. "In reality, to use the term for the sake of convenience, what you're doing is an easygoing attempt at self-justification. You are a totally pathetic, historical example of the phallocentric, to put it mildly."

"A pathetic, historical example," Oshima repeats, obviously impressed. By his tone of voice he seems to like the sound of that phrase.

"In other words you're a typical sexist, patriarchic male," the tall one pipes in, unable to conceal her irritation.