This is the second part of an extract by David Joiner from his work in progress. For Part One with an introduction by the author, click here. (NB Because of WordPress rules, the formatting has been changed.)
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The Shirasagi Express felt longer going back to Kanazawa. Sedge and his friends had turned a row of train seats around so they could face each other and speak freely, but they were too tired to engage much and, except for Sedge, everyone nodded off at different points. Sedge’s mind was on Nozomi. He’d messaged her this morning after checking out of the ryokan, but an hour and a half later he hadn’t received a reply. Imagining that their shop was busy today, he felt guilty that he wasn’t there to help her. But he was also aware that she’d sent him off for the weekend with his friends, declining his suggestions that she either join them or go somewhere only with him – thoughts that kept his guilt at bay.
When they arrived in Kanazawa, Sedge’s friends thanked him for the weekend. Shinji handed Sedge a box of wagashi that the three of them had bought at the ryokan’s gift shop without his knowledge.
“These are for Nozomi. Please apologize to her for having taken you away for so long.” Masa added: “And tell her that the next time you have reason to celebrate we won’t intrude so selfishly on your happiness together.”
In less than twenty minutes Sedge was standing in front of his apartment building, relieved to be home. Entering their apartment on the fifth floor, he called out “Tadaima” across the genkan and toward their living space, not expecting to hear Nozomi’s voice. At this time of day, he knew she would still be working.
The apartment appeared to have been thoroughly cleaned, and he imagined that she had taken advantage of his absence to put it in better order. Perhaps she had felt lonely over the last two days, and cleaning had made the time pass faster. As tired as he felt, he was grateful to see the normal clutter gone.
He veered into their bedroom, intent on taking a nap. As he collapsed on their bed, the last thing he saw before closing his eyes was the bare space on the wall where a photo of Nozomi’s family when she was a child had hung.
He slept until five o’clock. Rather than go see Nozomi, who he expected back by six, he went into the kitchen to make rice, then took out vegetables for a salad, as well as tofu, miso, dashi, and kombu tororo seaweed to prepare miso soup. At five-thirty, he rushed to the Daiwa supermarket across the street to buy her favorite sashimi: scallops, yellowtail, and sea bream.
It was nearly six when he got back. After setting the table, he wandered to the window. He watched people on the sidewalk drift past, and others lined up at the crosswalk directly below, but Nozomi wasn’t among them.
Having finished preparing their dinner, he retrieved his laptop from his backpack and set it on the dining room table. He logged onto the bank account they used for their shop. He felt a tremor in his heart when he saw that the account balance was almost zero, and that a succession of maximum daily withdrawals had been made over the last three days. He tried to imagine what transactions she might have paid, but nothing came to mind that would have depleted it. Logging into his personal account next, he saw that its balance had been depleted as well. He tried to log into Nozomi’s account, but the password he had saved on his computer no longer worked. What could this possibly mean? Only two days ago his account had shown $30,000. And their business account had shown close to half of this.
In a panic, he couldn’t find his phone. When he located it and called Nozomi, he heard a message that made him dial her several more times, but to no avail: “The number you called cannot be reached. Please check the number and dial again. The number you called cannot be…”
He called their shop but she didn’t pick up.
He stumbled back to the dining room window. The gingko trees on the sidewalk, more than half of which were green with new buds, had filled with crows; between his apartment and the hotel across the street they swooped onto the branches in growing numbers. It was March 3rd – thankfully he and Nozomi had paid rent for their shop and apartment at the end of last month. In four more weeks, however, he would have nothing to pay with, and neither landlord would let him charge his rent to a credit card. He had no idea what to do.
He sat down again to email Nozomi, only for his message to be returned undeliverable a minute later. Looking for her on her social media accounts, he saw they had all been deleted. He rushed to the drawer beneath their TV where they kept their passports in an old cookie tin. Ripping off its lid, his US passport was the only one there. He dumped out the drawer on the floor and scattered its contents, but there was no sign of her passport anywhere.
He ran into their bedroom and flung open Nozomi’s closet. Where two days ago her clothes had been crowded together on fifty or sixty hangers, and out-of-season clothing folded and stuffed into plastic crates, most of her clothes were now gone.
Their marriage had recently hit six years. Before they’d married, Sedge had been in a number of relationships, and every time one ended it had been because he’d walked away. The women he’d dated had usually fallen short in some way, or he simply hadn’t been ready to marry them, though he remembered one relationship he’d ended because he felt that the woman deserved better than him. Not once had someone he loved walked away from him. For Nozomi to do so was unthinkable. Perhaps even more improbable was that she had stolen from him, leaving him with nothing. The money was important, but if she had needed it, he would have given it all to her. It was the selfishness of the act that felt like she’d carried out some sort of violence against him. How could she have loved him one moment and in the next left him like she did?
He fell to his knees in the middle of her closet and looked in horror at its emptiness. The only worse fate he could imagine was Nozomi dying. He started to weep but stopped when he realized she obviously felt nothing of the sort for him.
Gasping for breath, it occurred to him to contact the police. But he wasn’t ready to do that yet.
Something made him hurry down to the lobby to check his mail, which he hadn’t bothered to do after returning from Wakasa Bay. Peering inside his mailbox, the only item he saw was a postcard.
Before reading it he studied the photograph on its front: an aerial shot of Tokyo in which the entire city was visible and yet nothing specific could be seen. The photo captured an impersonal coldness – nothing but the tops of buildings, with lines indicating streets cutting between them. Reluctantly he turned it over.
Sedge,
I had no choice but to leave you like I did, and I know that nothing I could say would make you understand. Also, I hope one day you’ll forgive me for taking all our money. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think you’d be all right. Please don’t look for me. By the time you receive this I’ll be far away.
Nozomi
“Narita City” was stamped on an upper corner of the postcard; she had sent it on March 1st. She must have mailed it from an airport hotel or from within the airport itself. Where on earth had she gone? He tried to think of what places had been high on her list to visit; conversations they’d had about traveling, both within Japan and overseas; travel articles he’d seen her reading; dreams she’d shared about leaving Kanazawa. Nothing came to mind. All he could think of were the mutual friends they had in America, and the friends she had made while spending half a year in high school as an exchange student in California. But these weren’t relationships that would have torn her away from him and away from her life in Japan. He couldn’t imagine where she’d gone, or for what reasons.
The unremembered conversation they’d had at the ryokan loomed in his thoughts. Had she explained herself to him? Or had she pretended that everything was normal and that she looked forward to seeing him again? So much could be said during a fifteen-minute call. Or so little. Or even nothing at all.
He imagined their conversation – or whatever it had been – burrowing into the cold bottom of Wakasa Bay, lost to him perhaps forever.
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For samples of David Joiner’s previous writing, see his piece on Izumi Kyoka or this extract from his forthcoming novel entitled Kanazawa. For information relating to his Vietnam novel, Lotusland, see here.