After the quake: stories Page 0,3

before yesterday. I’m sure he said quite clearly that you’d lost your wife.”

“I did. She divorced me. But as far as I know she’s alive and well.”

“That’s odd. I couldn’t possibly have misheard something so important.” She gave him an injured look. Komura put a small amount of sugar in his coffee and gave it a gentle stir before taking a sip. The liquid was thin, with no taste to speak of, more sign than substance. What the hell am I doing here? he wondered.

“Well, I guess I did mishear it. I can’t imagine how else to explain the mistake,” Keiko Sasaki said, apparently satisfied now. She drew in a deep breath and chewed her lower lip. “Please forgive me. I was very rude.”

“Don’t worry about it. Either way, she’s gone.”

Shimao said nothing while Komura and Keiko spoke, but she smiled and kept her eyes on Komura. She seemed to like him. He could tell from her expression and her subtle body language. A brief silence fell over the three of them.

“Anyway, let me give you the important package I brought,” Komura said. He unzipped his suitcase and pulled the box out of the folds of the thick ski undershirt he had wrapped it in. The thought struck him then: I was supposed to be holding this when I got off the plane. That’s how they were going to recognize me. How did they know who I was?

Keiko Sasaki stretched her hands across the table, her expressionless eyes fixed on the package. After testing its weight, she did as Komura had done and gave it a few shakes by her ear. She flashed him a smile as if to signal that everything was fine, and slipped the box into her oversize shoulder bag.

“I have to make a call,” she said. “Do you mind if I excuse myself for a moment?”

“Not at all,” Komura said. “Feel free.”

Keiko slung the bag over her shoulder and walked off toward a distant phone booth. Komura studied the way she walked. The upper half of her body was still, while everything from the hips down made large, smooth, mechanical movements. He had the strange impression that he was witnessing some moment from the past, shoved with random suddenness into the present.

“Have you been to Hokkaido before?” Shimao asked.

Komura shook his head.

“Yeah, I know. It’s a long way to come.”

Komura nodded, then turned to survey his surroundings. “Funny,” he said, “sitting here like this, it doesn’t feel as if I’ve come all that far.”

“Because you flew. Those planes are too damn fast. Your mind can’t keep up with your body.”

“You may be right.”

“Did you want to make such a long trip?”

“I guess so,” Komura said.

“Because your wife left?”

He nodded.

“No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself,” Shimao said.

Komura was staring at the sugar bowl on the table as she spoke, but then he raised his eyes to hers.

“It’s true,” he said. “No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself. It’s like your shadow. It follows you everywhere.”

Shimao looked hard at Komura. “I’ll bet you loved her, didn’t you?”

Komura dodged the question. “You’re a friend of Keiko Sasaki’s?”

“Right. We do stuff together.”

“What kind of stuff?”

Instead of answering him, Shimao asked, “Are you hungry?”

“I wonder,” Komura said. “I feel kind of hungry and kind of not.”

“Let’s go and eat something warm, the three of us. It’ll help you relax.”

Shimao drove a small four-wheel-drive Subaru. It had to have way over a hundred thousand miles on it, judging from how battered it was. The rear bumper had a huge dent in it. Keiko Sasaki sat next to Shimao, and Komura had the cramped rear seat to himself. There was nothing particularly wrong with Shimao’s driving, but the noise in back was terrible, and the suspension was nearly shot. The automatic transmission slammed into gear whenever it downshifted, and the heater blew hot and cold. Shutting his eyes, Komura felt as if he had been imprisoned in a washing machine.

No snow had been allowed to gather on the streets in Kushiro, but dirty, icy mounds stood at random intervals on both sides of the road. Dense clouds hung low and, although it was not yet sunset, everything was dark and desolate. The wind tore through the city in sharp squeals. There were no pedestrians. Even the traffic lights looked frozen.

“This is one part of Hokkaido that doesn’t get much snow,” Keiko Sasaki explained in a loud voice, glancing back at