I MUST HAVE BEEN eighteen or nineteen when I mowed lawns, a good fourteen or fifteen years ago. Ancient history.
Sometimes, though, fourteen or fifteen years doesn’t seem so long ago. I’ll think, that’s when Jim Morrison was singing “Light My Fire,” or Paul McCartney “The Long and Winding Road”—maybe I’m scrambling my years a bit, but anyway, about that time—it somehow never quite hits that it was really all that long ago. I mean, I don’t think I myself have changed so much since those days.
No, I take that back. I’m sure I must have changed a lot. There’d be too many things I couldn’t explain if I hadn’t.
Okay, I’ve changed. And these things happened all of fourteen, fifteen years back.
In my neighborhood—I’d just recently moved there—we had a public junior high school, and whenever I went out to run shopping errands or take a walk I’d pass right by it. So I’d find myself looking at the junior-high kids exercising or drawing pictures or just goofing off. Not that I especially enjoyed looking at them; there wasn’t anything else to look at. I could just as well have looked at the line of cherry trees off to the right, but the junior-high kids were more interesting.
So as things went, looking at these junior-high-school kids every day, one day it struck me. They were all just fourteen or fifteen years old. It was a minor discovery for me, something of a shock. Fourteen or fifteen years ago, they weren’t even born; or if they were, they were little more than semiconscious blobs of pink flesh. And here they were now, already wearing brassieres, masturbating, sending stupid little postcards to disc jockeys, smoking out in back of the gym, writing FUCK on somebody’s fence with red spray paint, reading—maybe—War and Peace. Phew, glad that’s done with.
I really meant it. Phew.
Me, back fourteen or fifteen years ago, I was mowing lawns.
MEMORY IS LIKE FICTION; or else it’s fiction that’s like memory. This really came home to me once I started writing fiction, that memory seemed a kind of fiction, or vice versa. Either way, no matter how hard you try to put everything neatly into shape, the context wanders this way and that, until finally the context isn’t even there anymore. You’re left with this pile of kittens lolling all over one another. Warm with life, hopelessly unstable. And then to put these things out as saleable items, you call them finished products—at times it’s downright embarrassing just to think of it. Honestly, it can make me blush. And if my face turns that shade, you can be sure everyone’s blushing.
Still, you grasp human existence in terms of these rather absurd activities resting on relatively straightforward motives, and questions of right and wrong pretty much drop out of the picture. That’s where memory takes over and fiction is born. From that point on, it’s a perpetual-motion machine no one can stop. Tottering its way throughout the world, trailing a single unbroken thread over the ground.
Here goes nothing. Hope all goes well, you say. But it never has. Never will. It just doesn’t go that way.
So where does that leave you? What do you do?
What is there to do? I just go back to gathering kittens and piling them up again. Exhausted kittens, all limp and played out. But even if they woke to discover themselves stacked like kindling for a campfire, what would the kittens think? Well, it might scarcely raise a “Hey, what gives?” out of them. In which case—if there was nothing to particularly get upset about—it would make my work a little easier. That’s the way I see it.
AT EIGHTEEN OR NINETEEN I mowed lawns, so we’re talking ancient history. Around that time I had a girlfriend the same age, but a simple turn of events had taken her to live in a town way out of the way. Out of a whole year we could get together maybe two weeks total. In that short time we’d have sex, go to the movies, wine and dine at some pretty fancy places, tell each other things nonstop, one thing after the next. And in the end we’d always cap it off with one hell of a fight, then make up, and have sex again. In other words, we’d be doing what most any couple does, only in a condensed version, like a short feature.
At this point in time, I don’t actually know if I really and truly loved her or not. Oh, I can bring her to mind, all right, but I just don’t know. These things, they happen. I liked eating out with her, liked watching her take off her clothes one piece at a time, liked how soft it felt inside her vagina. And after sex, I liked just looking at her with her head on my chest, talking softly until she’d fall asleep. But that’s all. Beyond that, I’m not sure of one single thing.
Save for that two-week period I was seeing her, my life was excruciatingly monotonous. I’d go to the university whenever I had classes and got more or less average marks. Maybe go to the movies alone, or stroll the streets for no special reason, or take some girl I got along with out on a date—no sex. Never much for loud get-togethers, I was always said to be on the quiet side. When I was by myself, I’d listen to rock ’n’ roll, nothing else. Happy enough, I guess, though probably not so very happy. But at the time, that was about what you’d expect.
One summer morning, the beginning of July, I got this long letter from my girlfriend, and in it she’d written that she wanted to break up with me. I’ve always felt close to you, and I still like you even now, and I’m sure that from here on I’ll continue to … et cetera, et cetera. In short, she was wanting to break it off. She had found herself a new boyfriend. I hung my head and smoked six cigarettes, went outside and drank a can of beer, came back in and smoked another cigarette. Then I took three HB pencils I had on my desk and snapped them in half. It wasn’t that I was angry, really. I just didn’t know what to do. In the end, I merely changed clothes and headed off to work. And for a while there, everyone within shouting distance was commenting on my suddenly “outgoing disposition.” What is it about life?
That year I had a part-time job for a lawn-care service near Kyodo Station on the Odakyu Line, doing a fairly good business. Most people, when they built houses in the area, put in lawns. That, or they kept dogs. The two things seemed mirror alternatives. (Although there were folks who did both.) Each had its own advantages: A green lawn is a thing of beauty; a dog is cute. But half a year passes, and things start to drag on everyone. The lawn needs mowing, and you have to walk the dog. Not quite what they bargained for.
Well, as it ended up, we mowed lawns for these people. The summer before, I’d found the job through the student union at the university. Besides me, a whole slew of others had come in at the same time, but they all quit soon thereafter; only I stayed on. It was demeaning work, but the pay wasn’t bad. What’s more, you could get by pretty much without talking to anyone. Just made for me. Since joining on there, I’d managed to save up a tidy little sum. Enough for my girlfriend and me to take a trip somewhere that summer. But now that she’d called the whole thing off, what difference did it make? For a week or so after I got her good-bye letter, I tried thinking up all sorts of ways to use the money. Or rather, I didn’t have anything better to think about than how to spend the money. A lost week it was. My penis looked like any other guy’s penis. But somebody—a somebody I didn’t know—was nibbling at her little nipples. Strange sensation. What was wrong with me?
I was hard-pressed to come up with some way of spending the money. There was a deal to buy someone’s used car—a 1000cc Subaru—not bad condition and the right price, but somehow I just didn’t feel like it. I also thought of buying new speakers, but in my tiny apartment with its wood-and-plasterboard walls, what would have been the point? I guess I could have moved, but I didn’t really have any reason to. And even if I did up and move out of my apartment, there wouldn’t have been enough money left over to buy the speakers.
There just wasn’t any way to spend the money. I bought myself a polo shirt and a few records, and the whole rest of the lump remained. So then I bought a really good Sony transistor radio—big speakers, clear FM reception, the works.
The whole week went past before it struck me. The fact of the matter was that if I bad no way of spending the money, there was no point in my earning it.
So one morning I broached the matter to the head of the lawn-mowing company, told him I’d like to quit. It was getting on time when I had to begin studying for exams, and before that I’d been thinking about taking a trip. I wasn’t about to say that I didn’t want the money anymore.
“Well, now, sorry to hear that,” said the head exec (I guess you’d call him that, although he seemed more like your neighborhood gardening man). Then he let out a sigh and sat down in his chair to take a puff of his cigarette. He looked up at the ceiling and craned his neck stiffly from side to side. “You really and truly do fine work. You’re the heart of the operation, the best of my part-timers. Got a good reputation with the customers, too. What can I say? You’ve done a tremendous job for someone so young.”
Thanks, I told him. Actually, I did have a good reputation. That’s because I did meticulous work. Most part-timers give the grass a thorough once-over with a big electric lawn mower and do only a mediocre job on the remaining areas. That way, they get done quickly without wearing themselves out. My method was exactly the opposite. I’d rough in with the mower, then put time into the hand trimming. So naturally, the finished product looked nice. The only thing was that the take was small, seeing as the pay was calculated at so much per job. The price went by the approximate area of the yard. And what with all that bending and stooping, my back would get plenty sore. It’s the sort of thing you have to be in the business to really understand. So much so that until you get used to it, you have trouble going up and down stairs.
Now, I didn’t do such meticulous work especially to build a reputation. You probably won’t believe me, but I simply enjoy mowing lawns. Every morning, I’d hone the grass clippers, head out to the customers in a minivan loaded with a lawn mower, and cut the grass. There’s all kinds of yards, all kinds of turf, all kinds of housewives. Quiet, thoughtful housewives and ones who shoot off their mouths. There were even your housewives who’d crouch down right in front of me in loose T-shirts and no bra so that I could see all the way to their nipples.
No matter, I kept on mowing the lawn. Generally, the grass in the yard would be pretty high. Overgrown like a thicket. The taller the grass, the more rewarding I’d find the job. When the job was finished, the yard would yield an entirely different impression. Gives you a really great feeling. It’s as if a thick bank of clouds has suddenly lifted, letting in the sun all around.
One time and one time only—after I’d done my work—did I ever sleep with one of these housewives. Thirty-one, maybe thirty-two she was, petite, with small, firm breasts. She closed all the shutters, turned out the lights, and we made it in the pitch-blackness. Even so, she kept on her dress, merely slipping off her underwear. She got on top of me, but wouldn’t let me touch her anywhere below her breasts. And her body was incredibly cold; only her vagina was warm. She hardly spoke a word. I, too, kept silent. There was just the rustling of her dress, now slower, now faster. The telephone rang midway. The ringing went on for a while, then stopped.
Later, I wondered if my girlfriend and I breaking up mightn’t have been on account of that interlude. Not that there was any particular reason to think so. It somehow just occurred to me. Probably because of the phone call that went unanswered. Well, whatever, it’s all over and done with.
“This really leaves me in a fix, you know,” said my boss. “If you pull out now, I won’t be able to stir up business. And it’s peak season, too.”
The rainy season really made lawns grow like crazy.
“What do you say? How about one more week? Give me a week. I’ll be able to find some new hands, and everything’ll be okay. If you’d just do that for me, I’ll give you a bonus.”
Fine, I told him. I didn’t especially have any other plans for the time being, and above all, I had no objections to the work itself. All the same, I couldn’t help thinking what an odd turn of events this was: The minute I decide I don’t need money, the dough starts pouring in.
Clear weather three days in a row, then one day of rain, then three more days of clear weather. So went my last week on the job. It was summer, though nothing special as summers go. Clouds drifted across the sky like distant memories. The sun broiled my skin. My back peeled three times, and by then I was tanned dark all over. Even behind my ears.
The morning of my last day of work found me in my usual gear—T-shirt and shorts, tennis shoes, sunglasses—only now as I climbed into the minivan, I was heading out for what would be my last lawn. The car radio was on the blink, so I brought along my transistor radio from home for some driving music. Creedence, Grand Funk, your regular AM rock. Everything revolved around the summer sun. I whistled along with snatches of the music, and smoked when not whistling. An FEN newscaster was stumbling over a rapid-fire list of the most impossible-to-pronounce Vietnamese place-names.
My last job was near Yomiuri Land Amusement Park. Fine by me. Don’t ask why someone living over the line in Kanagawa Prefecture felt compelled to call a Setagaya Ward lawn-mowing service. I had no right to complain, though. I mean, I myself chose that job. Go into the office first thing in the morning, and all the day’s jobs would be written up on a blackboard; each person then signed up for the places he wanted to work. Most of the crew generally chose places nearby. Less time back and forth, so they could squeeze in more jobs. Me, on the other hand, I chose jobs as far away as I could. Always. And that always puzzled everyone. But like I said before, I was the lead guy among the part-timers, so I got first choice of any jobs I wanted.
No reason for choosing what I did, really. I just liked mowing lawns farther away. I enjoyed the time on the road, enjoyed a longer look at the scenery on the way. I wasn’t about to tell anyone that—who would’ve understood?
I drove with all the windows open. The wind grew brisk as I headed out of the city, the surroundings greener. The simmering heat of the lawns and the smell of dry dirt came on stronger; the clouds were outlined sharp against the sky. Fantastic weather. Perfect for taking a little summer day trip with a girl somewhere. I thought about the cool sea and the hot sands. And then I thought of a cozy air-conditioned room with crisp blue sheets on the bed. That’s all. Aside from that, I didn’t think about a thing. My head was all beach and blue sheets.
I went on thinking about these very things while getting the tank filled at a gas station. I stretched out on a nearby patch of grass and casually watched the attendant check the oil and wipe the windows. Putting my ear to the ground, I could hear all kinds of things. I could even hear what sounded like distant waves, though of course it wasn’t. Only the rumble of all the different sounds the earth sucked in. Right in front of my eyes, a bug was inching along a blade of grass. A tiny green bug with wings. The bug paused when it reached the end of the grass blade, thought things over awhile, then decided to go back the same way it came. Didn’t look all that particularly upset.
Wonder if the heat gets to bugs, too?
Who knows?
In ten minutes, the tank was full, and the attendant honked the horn to let me know.
My destination address turned out to be up in the hills. Gentle, stately hills, rolling down to rows of zelkova trees on either flank. In one yard, two small boys in their birthday suits showering each other with a hose. The spray made a strange little two-foot rainbow in the air. From an open window came the sound of someone practicing the piano. Quite beautifully, too; you could almost mistake it for a record.
I pulled the van to a stop in front of the appointed house, got out, and rang the doorbell. No answer. Everything was dead quiet. Not a soul in sight, kind of like siesta time in a Latin country. I rang the doorbell one more time. Then I just kept on waiting.
It seemed a nice enough little house: cream-colored plaster walls with a square chimney of the same color sticking up from right in the middle of the roof. White curtains hung in the windows, which were framed in gray, though both were sun-bleached beyond belief. It was an old house, a house all the more becoming for its age. The sort of house you often find at summer resorts, occupied half the year and left empty the other half. You know the type. There was a lived-in air to the house that gave it its charm.
The yard was enclosed by a waist-high French-brick wall topped by a rosebush hedge. The roses had completely fallen off, leaving only the green leaves to take in the glaring summer sun. I hadn’t really taken a look at the lawn yet, but the yard seemed fairly large, and there was a big camphor tree that cast a cool shadow over the cream-colored house.
It took a third ring before the front door slowly opened and a middle-aged woman emerged. A huge woman. Now, I’m not so small myself, but she must have been a good inch and a half taller than me. And broad at the shoulders, too. She looked like she was plenty angry at something. She was around fifty, I’d say. No beauty certainly, but a presentable face. Although, of course, by “presentable” I don’t mean to suggest that hers was the most likable face. Rather thick eyebrows and a squarish jaw attested to a stubborn, never-go-back-on-your-word temperament.
Through sleep-dulled eyes she gave me the most bothered look. A slightly graying shock of stiff frizzy hair rippled across the crown of her head; her two thick arms drooped out of the shoulders of a frumpy brown cotton dress. Her limbs were utterly pale. “What is it?” she said.
“I’ve come to mow the lawn,” I said, taking off my sunglasses.
“The lawn?” She twisted her neck. “You mow lawns?”
“That’s right, and since you called—”
“Oh, I guess I did. The lawn. What’s the date today?”
“The fourteenth.”
To which she yawned, “The fourteenth, eh?” Then she yawned again. “Say, you wouldn’t have a cigarette, would you?”
Taking a pack of Hope regulars out of my pocket, I offered her one and lit it with a match. Whereupon she exhaled a long, leisurely puff of smoke up into the open air.
“Of all the …” she began. “What’s it gonna take?”
“Timewise?”
She thrust out her jaw and nodded.
“Depends on the size and how much work it needs. May I take a look?”
“Go ahead. Seeing’s how you gotta size it up first.”
There were some hydrangea bushes and that camphor tree and the rest was lawn. Two empty birdcages were set out beneath a window. The yard looked well tended, the grass was fairly short—hardly in need of mowing. I was kind of disappointed.
“This here’s still okay for another two weeks. No reason to mow now.”
“That’s for me to decide, am I right?”
I gave her a quick look. Well, she did have me there.
“I want it shorter. That’s what I’m paying you money for. Fair enough?”
I nodded. “I’ll be done in four hours.”
“Awful slow, don’t you think?”
“I like to work slow.”
“Well, suit yourself.”
I went to the van, took out the electric lawn mower, grass clippers, rake, garbage bag, my thermos of iced coffee, and my transistor radio, and brought them into the yard. The sun was climbing steadily toward the center of the sky. The temperature was also rising steadily. Meanwhile, as I was hauling out my equipment, the woman had lined up ten pairs of shoes by the front door and began dusting them with a rag. All of them women’s shoes, but of two different sizes, small and extra-large.
“Would it be all right if I put on some music while I work?” I asked.
The woman looked up from where she crouched. “Fine by me. I like music myself.”
Immediately I set about picking up whatever stones lay around the yard, and only then started up the lawn mower. Stones can really damage the blades. The mower was fitted with a plastic receptacle to collect all the clippings. I’d remove this receptacle whenever it got too full and empty the clippings into the garbage bag. With two thousand square feet to mow, even a short growth can amount to a lot of clippings. The sun kept broiling down on me. I stripped off my sweat-soaked T-shirt and kept working. In my shorts, I must have looked dressed down for some barbecue. I was all sweat. At this rate, I could have kept drinking water and drinking water and still not pissed a drop.
After about an hour of mowing, I took a break and sat myself down under the camphor tree to drink some iced coffee. I could feel my entire body just drinking up the sugar. Cicadas were droning overhead. I turned on the radio and poked around the dial for a decent disc jockey. I stopped when I came to a station playing Three Dog Night’s “Mama Told Me Not to Come,” lay down on my back, and just looked up through my shades at the sun filtering between the branches.
The woman came and planted herself by my head. Viewed from below, she resembled the camphor tree. Her right hand held a glass, and in it whiskey and ice were aswirl in the summer light.
“Hot, eh?” she said.
“You said it,” I replied.
“So what’s a guy like you do for lunch?”
I looked at my watch. It was 11:20.
“When noon rolls around, I’ll go get myself something to eat somewhere. I think there’s a hamburger stand nearby.”
“No need to go out of your way. I’ll fix you a sandwich or something.”
“Really, it’s all right. I always go off to get a bite.”
She raised the glass of whiskey to her mouth and downed half of it in one swallow. Then she pursed her lips and let out a sigh. “No bother to me. I was going to make something for myself anyway. C’mon, let me get you something.”
“Well, then, all right. Much obliged.”
“That’s okay,” she said, and trudged back into the house, slowly swaying at the shoulders.
I worked with the grass clippers until twelve. First, I went over the uneven spots in my mowing job; then, after raking up the clippings, I proceeded to trim where the mower hadn’t reached. Real time-consuming work. If I’d wanted to do just an adequate job, I could have done only so much and no more; if I wanted to do it right, I could do it right. But just because I’d get down to details didn’t necessarily mean my labors were always appreciated. Some folks would call it tedious nit-picking. Still, as I said before, I’m one for doing my best. It’s just my nature. And even more, it’s a matter of pride.
A noon whistle went off somewhere, and the woman took me into the kitchen for sandwiches. The kitchen wasn’t big, but it was clean and tidy. And except for the humming of the huge refrigerator, all was quiet. The plates and silverware were practically antiques. She offered me a beer, which I declined, seeing as I was “still on the job.” So she served me some orange juice instead. She herself, however, had a beer. A half-empty bottle of White Horse stood prominently on the table, and the sink was filled with all kinds of empty bottles.
I enjoyed the sandwich. Ham, lettuce, and cucumber, with a tang of mustard. Excellent sandwich, I told her. Sandwiches were the only things she was good at, she said. She didn’t eat a bite, though—just nibbled at a pickle, and devoted the rest of her attention to her beer. She wasn’t especially talkative, nor did I have anything worth bringing up.
At twelve-thirty, I returned to the lawn. My last afternoon lawn.
I listened to rock music on FEN while I gave one last touch-up trim, then raked the lawn repeatedly and checked from several angles for any overlooked places, just like barbers do. By one-thirty, I was two-thirds done. Time and again, sweat would get into my eyes, and I would go douse my face at the outdoor faucet. A couple of times I got a hard-on, then it would go away. Pretty ridiculous, getting a hard-on just mowing a lawn.
I finished working by two-twenty. I turned off the radio, took off my shoes, and walked all over the lawn in my bare feet: nothing left untrimmed, no uneven patches. Smooth as a carpet.
“Even now, I still like you,” she had written in her last letter. “You’re kind, and one of the finest people I know. But somehow, that just wasn’t enough. I don’t know why I feel that way, I just do. It’s a terrible thing to say, I know, and it probably won’t amount to much of an explanation. Nineteen is an awful age to be. Maybe in a few years I’ll be able to explain things better, but after a few years it probably won’t matter anymore, will it?”
I washed my face at the faucet, then loaded my equipment back into the van and changed into a new T-shirt. Having done that, I went to the front door of the house to announce that I’d finished.
“How about a beer?” the woman asked.
“Don’t mind if I do,” I said. What could be the harm of one beer, after all?
Standing side by side at the edge of the yard, we surveyed the lawn, I with my beer, she with a long vodka tonic, no lemon. Her tall glass was the kind they give away at liquor stores. The cicadas were still chirping the whole while. The woman didn’t look a bit drunk; only her breathing seemed a little unnatural, drawn slow between her teeth with a slight wheeze.
“You do good work,” she said. “I’ve called in a lot of lawn-maintenance people before, but you’re the first to do this good a job.”
“You’re very kind,” I said.
“My late husband was fussy about the lawn, you know. Always did a crack job himself. Very much like the way you work.”
I took out my cigarettes and offered her one. As we stood there smoking, I noticed how big her hands were compared to mine. Big enough to dwarf both the glass in her right hand and the Hope regular in her left. Her fingers were stubby—no rings—and several of the nails had strong vertical lines running through them.
“Whenever my husband got any time off, he’d always be mowing the lawn. But mind you, he was no oddball.”
I tried to conjure up an image of the woman’s husband, but I couldn’t quite picture the guy. Any more than I could imagine a camphor-tree husband and wife.
The woman wheezed again. “Ever since my husband passed away,” she said, “I’ve had to call in professionals. I can’t stand too much sun, you know, and my daughter, she doesn’t like getting tanned. Other than to get a tan, no real reason for a young girl to be mowing lawns anyway, right?”
I nodded.
“My, but I do like the way you work, though. That’s the way lawns ought to be mowed.”
I looked the lawn over one more time. The woman belched.
“Come again next month, okay?”
“Next month’s no good,” I said.
“How’s that?” she said.
“This job here today’s my last,” I said. “If I don’t get myself back on the ball with my studies, my grade point average is going to be in real trouble.”
The woman looked me hard in the face, then glanced at my feet, then looked back at my face.
“A student, eh?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“What school?”
The name of the university made no visible impression on her. It wasn’t a very impressive university. She just scratched behind her ear with her index finger.
“So you’re giving up this line of work, then?”
“Yeah, for this summer at least,” I said. No more mowing lawns for me this summer. Nor next summer, nor the next.
The woman filled her cheeks with vodka tonic as if she were going to gargle, then gulped down her precious mouthwash half a swallow at a time. Her whole forehead beaded up with sweat, like it was crawling with tiny bugs.
“Come inside,” the woman said. “It’s too hot outdoors.”
I looked at my watch. Two thirty-five. Getting late? Still early? I couldn’t make up my mind. I’d already finished with all my work. From tomorrow, I wouldn’t have to mow another inch of grass. I had really mixed feelings.
“You in a hurry?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“So why don’t you just come in and have something cool to drink before you get on your way? Won’t take much time. And besides, I’ve got something I want you to see.”
Something she wants me to see?
Still, there was no hesitating, one way or another. She had already started to shuffle off ahead of me. She didn’t even bother to look back in my direction. I had no choice but to follow her. I felt kind of light-headed from the heat.
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.
NOT ONCE SINCE then have I mowed a lawn. Someday, though, should I come to live in a house with a lawn, I’ll probably be mowing again. That’ll be a good while yet, I figure. But when that time comes, I’m sure to do the job just right.
—translated by Alfred Birnbaum