The Elephant Vanishes (35 page)

The interior of the house was just as deathly quiet as before. Ducking in from the flood of summer afternoon light so suddenly, I felt my eyes tingle from deep behind my pupils. Darkness—in a dim, somehow dilute solution—washed through the place, a darkness that seemed to have settled in decades ago. The air was chilly, but not with the chill of air-conditioning. It was the fluid chill of air in motion: Somewhere a breeze was getting in, somewhere it was leaking out.

“This way,” the woman said, traipsing off down a long, straight hallway. There were several windows along the passage, but the stone wall of a neighboring house and an overgrowth of zelkova trees still managed to block out the light. All sorts of smells drifted the length of the hallway, each recalling something different. Time-worn smells, built up over time, only to dissipate in time. The smell of old clothes and old furniture, old books, old lives. At the end of the hallway was a staircase. The woman turned around to make sure I was following, then headed up the stairs. The old boards creaked with every step.

At the top of the stairs, some light finally shone into the house. The window on the landing had no curtain, and the summer sun pooled on the floor. There were only two rooms upstairs, one a storage room, the other a regular bedroom. The smoky-green door had a small frosted-glass portal. The green paint had begun to chip slightly, and the brass doorknob was patinaed white on the handgrip.

The woman pursed her lips and blew out a slow stream of air, set her empty vodka-tonic glass on the windowsill, fished a key ring out of her dress pocket, and noisily unlocked the door.

“Go on in,” she said. We stepped into the room. Inside, it was pitch-black and stuffy, full of hot, still air. Only the thinnest silver-foil sheets of light sliced into the room from the cracks between the tightly closed shutters. I couldn’t make out a thing, just flickering specks of airborne dust. The woman drew back the curtains, opened the windows, and slid back shutters that rattled in their tracks. Instantly, the room was swept with brilliant sunlight and a cool southerly breeze.

The bedroom was your typical teenage girl’s room. Study desk by the window, small wood-framed bed over on the other side of the room. The bed was dressed in coral-blue sheets—not a wrinkle on them—and pillowcases of the same color. There was also a blanket folded at the foot of the bed. Next to the bed stood a wardrobe and a dresser on which were arranged a few toiletries. A hairbrush and a small pair of scissors, a lipstick, a compact, and whatnot. She didn’t seem all that much of a makeup enthusiast.

Stacked on the desk were notebooks and two dictionaries, French and English. Both looked well used. Literally so; not ill-treated but handled with some care. An assortment of pens and pencils were neatly laid out in a small tray, along with an eraser worn round on one side only. Then there was an alarm clock, a desk lamp, and a glass paperweight. All quite plain. On the wood-paneled wall hung five full-color bird pictures and a calendar with only dates. A finger run over the desktop became white with dust, a whole month’s worth. The calendar still read June.

Overall, though, I had to say the room was refreshingly uncluttered for a girl these days. No stuffed toys, no photos of rock stars. No frilly decorations or flower-print wastepaper bin. Just a built-in bookcase lined with anthologies, volumes of poetry, movie magazines, painting-exhibition catalogs. There were even some English paperbacks. I tried to form an image of the girl whose room this was, but the only face that came to mind was that of my ex-girlfriend.

The woman sat her middle-aged bulk down on the bed and
looked at me. She had been following my line of vision all along but seemed to be thinking of something entirely different. Her eyes were turned in my direction, all right, yet she wasn’t actually seeing anything. I plunked myself down in the chair by the desk and gazed at the plaster wall behind the woman. Nothing hung there; it was a blank wall. Stare at it long enough, though, and the top began to tilt in toward me. It seemed sure to topple over onto her head any minute. But of course, it wouldn’t; the light just made it look that way.

“Won’t you have something to drink?” she asked. I told her no.

“Really now, don’t stand on ceremony. It’s not like you’re going to kick yourself afterward for having something.”

So I said okay, I’d have the same, pointing to her vodka tonic, only watered down a bit, please. Five minutes later, she returned with two vodka tonics and an ashtray. I took a sip of my vodka tonic. It wasn’t watered at all. I decided to smoke a cigarette and wait for the ice to melt.

“You’ve got a healthy body,” she said. “You won’t get drunk.”

I nodded vaguely. My father was that way, too. Still, there hasn’t been a human being yet won out in a match against alcohol. The only stories you hear are about people who never catch on to things until they’ve sunk past their noses. My father died when I was sixteen. A real fine-line case, his was. So fine I can hardly recall if he’d even been alive or not.

The woman remained silent all this time. The only sound she made was the tinkling of ice in her glass each time she took a sip. Every so often a cool breeze would blow in through the open window from another hill across the way to the south. A tranquil summer afternoon that seemed destined to put me to sleep. Somewhere, far off, a phone was ringing.

“Have a look inside the wardrobe,” the woman prompted. I walked over to the wardrobe and opened the double doors, as I was told. The inside was absolutely packed with hangers and hangers of clothes. Half dresses, the other half skirts and blouses
and jackets, all of them summer clothes. Some things looked pretty old, others as if they’d scarcely even been tried on. All the skirts were minis. Everything was nice enough, I suppose. The taste, the material, nothing that would catch your eye, but not bad.

With this many clothes, a girl could wear a different outfit each date for an entire summer. I looked at the rack of clothes awhile longer, then shut the door.

“Nice stuff,” I said.

“Have a look in the drawers,” the woman said. I was hesitant, but what could I do? I gave in and pulled open the drawers in the bottom of the wardrobe one by one. Going into a girl’s room in her absence and turning it inside out—even with her mother’s permission—wasn’t my idea of the decent thing to do, but it would have been equally bothersome to refuse. Far be it from me to figure out what goes on in the mind of someone who starts hitting the bottle at eleven in the morning. In the first big drawer on top were sweaters, polo shirts, and T-shirts, washed and neatly folded without a wrinkle. In the second drawer were handbags, belts, handkerchiefs, bracelets, plus a few fabric hats. In the third drawer, underwear, socks, and stockings. Everything was clean and neat. Somehow, it made me just a little sad, as if something were weighing down on my chest. I shut the last drawer.

The woman was still sitting on the bed, staring out the window at the scenery. The vodka tonic in her right hand was almost empty.

I returned to the chair and lit up a brand-new cigarette. The window looked out on a gentle slope that ran down to where another slope picked up. Greenery as far as the eye could see, hill and dale, with tract-house streets pasted on as an afterthought. Each house having its own yard, each yard its lawn.

“What d’you think?” asked the woman, eyes still fixed on the window. “You know, about the girl …”

“How can I say without ever having met her?” I said.

“Most women, you look at their clothes, you know what they’re like,” she said.

I thought about my girlfriend. Then I tried to remember the sort of clothes she wore. I drew a blank. What I could recall of her was all too vague. No sooner had I begun to see her skirt than I lost sight of her blouse; I’d managed to bring her hat to mind when the face changed into some other girl’s. I couldn’t remember a single thing from just half a year before. When it came right down to it, what
had
I known about her?

“How can I say?” I repeated.

“General impressions are good enough. Whatever comes to mind. Anything you’d care to say, any little bit at all.”

I took a sip of my vodka tonic to gain myself some time. The ice had almost all melted, making the tonic water taste like lemonade. The vodka still packed a punch going down, creating a warm glow in my stomach. A breeze burst through the window and sent white cigarette ash flying all over the desk.

“Seems she’s nice—very nice—keeps everything in order,” I said. “Not too pushy, though not without character, either. Grades in the upper mid-range of her class. Goes to a women’s college or junior college, doesn’t have so many friends, but close ones … Am I on target?”

“Keep going.”

I swirled the glass around in my hand a couple of times, then set it down on the desk. “I don’t know what more to say. In the first place, I don’t even know if what I’ve said so far was anywhere close.”

“You’re pretty much on target,” she said blankly, “pretty much on target.”

Little by little, I was beginning to get a feel for the girl; her presence hovered over everything in the room like a hazy white shadow. No face, no hands, nothing. Just a barely perceptible disturbance in a sea of light. I took another sip of my vodka tonic.

“She’s got a boyfriend,” I continued, “or two. I don’t know.
I can’t tell how close they are. But that’s neither here nor there. What matters is … she hasn’t really taken to anything. Her own body, the things she thinks about, what she’s looking for, what others seek in her … the whole works.”

“Uh-huh,” the woman said after a moment’s pause. “I see what you’re saying.”

I didn’t. Oh, I knew what the words meant, but to whom were they directed? And from whose point of view? I was exhausted, wanted just to sleep. If only I could get some sleep, a lot of things would surely become clearer. All the same, I couldn’t believe that getting things clearer would make them any easier.

At that the woman fell silent for a long time. I also held my tongue. Ten, fifteen minutes like that. Nothing better to do with my hands, I ended up drinking half the vodka tonic. The breeze picked up a bit, and the round leaves of the camphor tree began to sway.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have kept you here,” the woman said sometime later. “You did such a beautiful job on the lawn, I was just so pleased.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Let me pay you,” she said, thrusting her big white hand into her dress pocket. “How much is it?”

“They’ll be sending you a regular bill later. You can pay by bank transfer,” I said.

“Oh,” said the woman.

We went back down the same staircase, through the same hallway, out to the front door. The hallway and entry way were just as chilly as when we came in, chilly and dark. I felt I’d returned to my childhood, back in the summers when I used to wade up this shallow creek and would pass under a big iron bridge. It was exactly the same sensation. Darkness, and suddenly the temperature of the water would drop. And the pebbles would have this funny slime. When I got to the front door and put on my tennis shoes, was I ever relieved! Sunlight all around me, the leaf-scented breeze, a few bees buzzing sleepily about the hedge.

“Really beautifully mowed,” said the woman, once again viewing the lawn.

I gave the lawn another look, too. A really beautiful job, to be sure.

The woman reached into her pocket, and started pulling out all kinds of stuff—truly all kinds of junk—from which she picked out a crumpled ten-thousand-yen note. The bill wasn’t even that old, just all crumpled up. It could have passed for fourteen, fifteen years old. After a moment’s hesitation, I decided I’d better not refuse.

“Thank you,” I said.

The woman seemed to have still left something unsaid. As if she didn’t quite know how to put it. She stared down at the glass in her right hand, kind of lost. The glass was empty. Then she looked back up at me.

“You decide to start mowing lawns again, be sure to give me a call. Anytime at all.”

“Right,” I said. “Will do. And say, thanks for the sandwich and the drink.”

The woman hemmed and hawed, then promptly turned an about-face and walked back to the front door. I started the engine on the van and turned on the radio. Getting on three o’clock, it was.

I pulled into a drive-in for a little pick-me-up and ordered a Coca-Cola and spaghetti. The spaghetti was so utterly disgusting I could finish only half of it. But if you really want to know, I wasn’t hungry anyway. A sickly-looking waitress cleared the table, and I dozed off right there, seated on the vinyl-covered chair. The place was empty, after all, and the air-conditioning just right. It was only a short nap—no dreams. If anything, the nap itself seemed like a dream. Although when I opened my eyes, the sun’s rays weren’t as intense as they had been. I drank another Coke, then paid the bill with the ten-thousand-yen note I’d just received.

I went out to the parking lot, got in the van, put the keys on the dashboard, and smoked a cigarette. Loads of minuscule
aches came over my weary muscles all at once. All things considered, I was worn out. I put aside any notion of driving and just sank into the seat. I smoked another cigarette. Everything seemed so far off, like looking through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. “I’m sure you must want many things from me,” my girlfriend had written, “but I myself just can’t conceive that there’s anything in me you’d want.”

All I wanted, it came to me, was to mow a good lawn. To give it a once-over with the lawn mower, rake up the clippings, and then trim it nice and even with clippers—that’s all. And that, I can do. Because that’s the way I feel it ought to be done.

Isn’t that right?
I spoke out loud.

No answer.

Ten minutes later, the manager of the drive-in came out and crouched by the van to inquire if everything was all right.

“I felt a little faint,” I said.

“Yes, it’s been a scorcher. Shall I bring you some water?”

“Thank you. But really, I’m fine.”

I pulled out of the parking lot and started east. On both sides of the road were different homes, different yards, different people all leading different lives. My hands on the wheel, I took in the whole passing panorama, the lawn mower rattling all the while in the compartment behind.