fiction | Alana Kelsall

SOMEWHERE OF SOUTH YOKOHAMA

I LIE IN BED with Hiro in our flat near Yokohama station. Even on the floor, the heat is stifling. Hiro turns on the fan and glances across at me. Tod, you know my Aussie friend, Christine? I stiffen, but keep my eyes closed. Her face with its bouncy blonde curls and little rabbit grin pops into my head. She’d organised business seminars back in Melbourne when Hiro and I were both students at Monash. He’d gone along as an interpreter for a Japanese company and had come back saying how cute she was. Then there was her party and roomfuls of people I didn’t know and Christine coming down the stairs in that tasselled frock. Spinning in front of Hiro with little squeaky giggles.
     Tod, you awake? Yes, I do remember her, I say slowly, and fall silent again. My name is Donna but he’s called me Tod from the earliest days of our relationship. Tod, the deep sea fish, the one that rarely comes to the surface. The one that hides below the waves. This time, keeping quiet means sounding for danger. Did they start a relationship after that party, perhaps later that week? I still don’t know and I didn’t want to know then. It took all my resolve to go up to my lectures that week, lift my hand to the lined paper, and return to my room. I didn’t want to see him smoothing his immaculate hair for someone else.
     But the irritation has seeped into my voice and he misses nothing. Tod, I know what you think but Christine’s nice person, really. Hm. Why you don’t think so? She work hard and not much money and live with mother in that big house. She good fun for you I think and you can catch up bit about Melbourne.
     I’m wide awake in an instant. She’s coming here? Yeah, of course. I can feel Hiro’s eyes on me and say nothing more. Instead, I look up at the closed curtains of the lounge a few steps away and the blank screen of the TV on a small table. This new flat with its narrow angles is already jutting into our lives. It is the latest place where we strain to touch and separate. As always, in the mornings, I turn the futon into a sofa and fold the sheets away in a cupboard. Folding away the uncertain masonry of our life in the dark. I seem to fall back onto some hard slab of my being and I can’t unbend. By day I walk to and fro in classrooms of quiet, motionless children. In the evening I have classes with tired businessmen, coaxing them into the shoes of someone else’s language. I too am tired. I question everything I am doing. Some days, I see Hiro in all of them; the smart suits and ties, the trim figures, the smooth, confident air. I imagine them ranging over the city, doing deals behind banks of windows, laughing in dimly lit bars and later, briefcases on the floor, lolling to sleep on late night trains out of Tokyo.
     For the first time I am in someone else’s country and on the edge of his family, not my own. Nobody knows me here. I have made myself anew with practiced phrases tumbling from my lips and clothes that fit well. But inside me I am shrinking with the folding up and putting away, shrinking back into the heaviness of stone. How can I adjust to this weight, try not to be clumsy, not to be too loud, keep my long arms and laughter in, be careful with hems and borders?
     Once, Hiro took my hand and stroked it as we walked to Shin-bashi station. I like this scarf, he said. And the dress. It looks good on you. I stopped and hugged him in the street, grinning. Don’t smile like that, he said. Too much on your face.
     Where have I put these parts of myself, I wonder, especially the part that won’t be silent? I can feel it, clawing at my stomach when I am most invisible. Even during our sudden lovemaking in the dark. The next day I wash my face, put make-up on. I am a foreigner here, on the edge of all these lives. I dress with care, make an oval of my face with slides and pins, a calm, unhurried look, making sure there is no way that I can fail.
     But I thought we had left Christine behind. Christine is sparky and bubbly and I’m not. Could I fake an illness? Fall down? No, then I’d be left in this two-room flat, thinking about them being together.
     When’s she coming? I don’t know Tod. She organise this cruise, you know, so she’s got free ticket. To Hong Kong I think via places like Bangkok, Tokyo. It’s holiday for her. Anyway she doesn’t have boyfriend. How do you know? I ask.
     He doesn’t like that question. I can feel it. He flexes his arms and his legs and then props his head on one hand and looks down at me with his cute-boy smile. You jealous? I shut my eyes and don’t reply. Anyway Tod, this is fact. She wants to see me. And you of course. We can help her. Maybe dinner one night. And not much money. So you said, I interrupt. Don’t worry about her, he sighs, flopping down on his stomach. She is cute but too short. He shuts his eyes as the fan blows gently over our skin.
     Something tightens inside me as if my life is sliding away with his dismissal of her and I have to wall up my defences. I’d felt safe. Safe? What does that mean? I am always home before him. I wait for his key in the door and then my day opens as his closes. Often I’m lying in the dark, listening to the sound of his keys hitting the low table, the scrape of the fridge door, his ring clinking against the side of a glass. As he comes towards the bed I can smell it on his clothes and his breath, the long hours in a bar, the whisky and cigarettes. I’ve seen these company men after my own late-night classes, loud groups of them, entertaining their customers at bars, bowing them into taxis out the front.
     And so many bar girls. They’re just for fun, Tod, he said, otherwise who want to work like this? Phew! he would say, kneeling on the floor and falling full length onto the futon. So, I think wryly, Japanese girls aren’t the competition here. It’s long hours and Western girls. Girls like Christine? If she doesn’t mean anything to him anymore, and she’s such fun, then who does?
     I don’t ask him if he loves me and this is our second year together. I don’t think I’ve ever asked him that. What I thought, way back then in Australia, when we got married, was that I would make him love me. See my name in his eyes when he was near me. Now I think I would say, make him love me. Make him put an end to those breathy phone calls I sometimes get after I’ve gone to bed. Who are you? I’d said in Japanese the third time, but the line went dead. Customer, Hiro said later that night. What you thinking Tod?
     If you think too much, my friend June says, they just run away. June, my one friend in Tokyo from our Monash days, crossing her long, elegant legs and laughing. And if you apologise, you end up wanting to smack them because you can’t stand yourself. Oh Donna, what can we do? Don’t think about it, I tell myself, lighting a cigarette and dropping the match into a large, glass ashtray on the floor.

THE PHONE RANG on Saturday morning at his parents’ house. It was the day before Christine’s arrival and we were sitting on the tatami mats in the main room with Hiro’s brother, Masa, looking out at the side garden. I was looking at Hiro. I remember clasping my hands so I wouldn’t lean over and hug him. Bind him to me so he couldn’t leave. We must all have been smoking because I didn’t know where to put my cigarette after that phone call. Hiro slid across the tatami and reached up for the phone. I could hear him in the background and the slow, precise way he spoke English on the phone. Tod, he called, and held the phone out to me. I put it to my ear without saying anything, the blood rushing to my head. Donna? Is that you? A high, squeaky voice, Aussie accent.
     I burst into tears. Hiro put his arm around me but I pushed him back. I couldn’t talk. What is it Tod? I get her to call back? I took a quick breath. Who? Your friend June, you know? She doesn’t have our new flat number.
     I smiled into the receiver for a moment as I thought of June, striding through Tokyo Uni, off to another party, her Masters still under review. I walked towards the far corner of the room where Hiro’s mother had her kimono drawers. I turned my back on the garden. I didn’t want them to hear my cracked voice. I didn’t want to think about being trapped and unhappy with a Japanese man over here. Too much in common with June and her new Thai boyfriend. One day I had asked Tsuneo, Hiro’s friend from secondary school, what couples did together in Tokyo. I remembered Aussie parties in share houses with dancing and slabs of beer. Do they go dancing at nightclubs? I asked hopefully. Tsuneo stiffened and sucked in his breath. Pick-up place, he said. Hiro never take you there.
     I said hello to June and told her I was fine, really. In my old jokey voice I said the new flat was fine too, with two pots of bamboo for a garden. June told me she was desperate. She said her Thai boyfriend now wanted to learn Japanese and the last time she saw him he was in a bar. A Japanese girl was pouring drinks for him, lighting his cigarettes. I’d call that fawning, wouldn’t you Donna? And the worst thing is, I’m too angry to stay. And I haven’t finished my thesis. I want to punch him in the face with it before I go. What’s wrong with me Donna? I think you’re desperate, I replied. She laughed but I didn’t. I said it wasn’t a good time and hung up. I’ll think about it later, I thought, like everything else.
     Hiro put the phone back in its holder and reached for my hand. Come with me, he said. I help you. He took me on the train to a run-down picture theatre nearby where we saw three Westerns in a row. There was a desert, with a howling wind. Vultures, or were they eagles? Hard-bitten voices ricocheting off canyon walls. He held my hand in the dark and this English washed over me, dragging my other moorings into place. I came out refreshed, closer to my Australian self.
     Early Sunday morning the wide street leading to the Yokohama docks was almost deserted. We drove slowly in Masa’s car, a big, black Nissan from his company. We’d dropped in that morning to ask him for it and Tsuneo came along as well. Were we making up numbers for Christine, I wondered, or for me? It’s all arranged, Hiro said, smiling at me. Tsuneo, you sit in front. I looked at the empty seat belt between Hiro and me in the back and guessed where she’d be. Masa cruised slowly down the street. So fast, Tsuneo said, opening and shutting the glove box. I must hold onto something. Hiro smiled his lazy smile but said nothing.
     I looked out the tinted windows and tried to relax. The cruise ship would have docked by now. She would be walking down the gangway, probably in high heels. She’d have that brown leather jacket on, half undone, and her blonde hair would be curled and bouncing in the wind. Masa slowed the car right down for the dip at the entrance to the car park. I was sitting behind him, staring at the rows of cars, the taxis, the terminal, and the funnels of the ship just visible on the other side. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a taxi move off from the head of the line and head for the exit ramp. Masa didn’t know what to look for but I did. In the back seat on the far window I could just make out blonde hair and a brown leather jacket. The taxi moved slowly past the rows of cars. I looked across at Hiro but he was looking out the other window. Masa turned right and entered the car park as the taxi exited behind us.
     I touched Hiro’s arm. Does she know we’re coming? Have you organised it? Don’t worry Tod. We sort this out you and me, already. Just help, that’s all we do. I bit my lip. He was still going on about her, that blonde pygmy with no money. I grabbed my handbag, unzipped it and started shuffling receipts and lipsticks around. Anything to keep my hands busy. I wanted to rip my handbag into shreds and throw it all over him. I wanted to make him untidy and unsettled. All this pain just for him and that peroxided dwarf. And he hadn’t even organised it. It’s a maybe-we’re-just-dropping-in thing. She’ll probably ring in a few hours, or tomorrow, or from Hong Kong, the next stop. I’ll have to go through all this again. She’s got his number, I’m sure, on her midriff, in among the tassels. I zipped up my handbag. I hope she breaks out in a sweat, I thought, in this summer heat. I hope she gets a rash.
     Masa unlocked the doors and we got out. The wind was gusty, blowing my long hair back, flapping at their trousers as we walked. Hiro checked at the counter. Seagulls sat on top of the light poles but she was nowhere to be seen.
     I said nothing. He hadn’t bothered to talk to me. I had shut myself in, I knew, in this dark, airless space where I couldn’t say anything. Holding myself back. Hardly able to love anymore. Had he noticed anything? He was coming towards me, his eyes narrowing. I squared my shoulders. Rage was creeping to the surface, buoying me up. I was alive with it, stoking my own fires. I didn’t think about damage. I didn’t think about where I was going or where I was leading him. And in the back of my mind were the waves, rushing back and forth. This is better, I thought, than sitting at home, waiting for him.

This is an extract from the novel ‘The First Fire’.

© Alana Kelsall

Overland 186–autumn 2007, p.54