Nagoyan packed his medicine into his rucksack, rolled up T-shirts and pairs of jeans, stuffed them in, and then went to the bathroom cabinet to retrieve his hair wax and electric shaver. It did indeed seem that we were setting out on a journey. Seeing that his carefully folded underwear consisted of boxer shorts, I felt strangely relieved, even though it obviously had nothing to do with me. I was worried about what to do myself in that department, but was much too ashamed to say so.
“Would ye lend me a couple of T-shirts?” I asked.
“Sure,” he replied and tossed in two more. They were of a grayish color.
From the standpoint of time alone, it would be much too hazardous to go pick up anything from home. Besides, I had not the slightest excuse for showing up there. My parents would probably not allow it and might have already been tipped off by a call from the hospital.
There was a parking lot in the residential street behind the apartment building. Nagoyan’s car was an old, rectangular geezer crate – and white to boot. It didn’t fit the image of a stylish young man with dyed brown hair.
“A Nagoya license plate…” I sniggered, having never seen one before on the road.
“Don’t laugh,” he said. “One of these days I’ll be sporting Shinagawa plates.”
The thought of upmarket Tokyo plates on that car was a crackup. Shinagawa, indeed.
“It’s jus’ like a scene from Howling at the Sun.”
I had remembered an episode with the macaroni cop and the Boss.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a corpse in the trunk, ’n at th’ end, the car explodes ’n burns.”
“Huh?”
Nagoyan smiled wryly and heaved his rucksack into his corpseless trunk. For an instant, as I got in on the passenger’s side, I smelled the faint odor of an unknown male. Somehow I found my heart pounding. Though I had no particular interest in the answer, I asked him, “Whit’s the make o’ this car?”
“It’s a Luce. My father gave it to me when he bought a new one.”
I grunted some sort of reply, to which Nagoyan added, “Even so, it’s been called the ‘Hiroshima Mercedes’.”
I couldn’t understand what the boast was all about. Would people refer to the Hiroshima Baseball Stadium as “Hiroshima’s Fukuoka Dome”?
Nagoyan started the engine. The sound of punk rock emerged from a cassette tape, the car being too old for a CD player.
“Whit’s the group?” I asked.
“The Peas. Not Going Back Anywhere.”
He rewound the tape.
My brains are in the way,
Half of ’em will do.
I just don’t want to get involved…
My brains are in the way.
The message seemed so “to the moment” as to have been contrived.
“They got back together a few years ago.”
“Huh? Is this whit ye like then?”
“Do you, Hana-chan?”
“It’s awright.”
I hadn’t expected this. I would have thought him to be one for quieter music.
The road that led to Route 3 was congested; Nagoyan was clearly irritated.
Twenty yards of linen are worth one coat.
When a car in the next lane forced its way into ours, he screeched, “These crazy drivers!! You can blink your turn signal till you’re blue in the face and they still won’t let you in. And then they bulldoze their way into your lane as if they wanted to mow you down! It’s really only the Fukuokans who get to me. In Tokyo, we’ve got gentlemen behind the wheel!”
“Why dont’cha jus’ give ’em a loud honk?”
“Why is it that even girls like you talk such rot? The point is that it’s a matter of manners, isn’t it?”
“If ye want t’ survive on the road ’round here, ye hafta show some guts.”
I remembered what a hot-blooded driver Tsuyoshi was. He’d roll down the window and scream. Here, even the buses careen about. My father would always carry a wooden sword in the trunk of his car, which is why Nagoyan’s raging about it all was so absurd. Once you’re out on the public road, you never know when you’ll run into someone who’s hauling around a thing like that. It’s really that dicey. …Not that I was a driver myself.
“Are we really going to do this? I can’t help thinking that it’s a bad idea after all. In fact, I get the feeling that it’s quite a bad idea.”
Nagoyan kept talking like that, but I said nothing. Having been thinking that we were on a journey to a place far, far away, I realized that we were now on the old Route 3. There was something nostalgic about the dreary landscape.
I bade a silent farewell to my native Fukuoka.
“Where should we be heading?”
“Haven’t ye got a navi?”
“How could I? This is a 1987 car. If you want a map, you’ll find one in the glove compartment.”
“1987? Now that’s, like, old!”
In the glove compartment was a map of Fukuoka’s byways, along with one of the twenty-three wards of Tokyo and yet another – the kind provided in service areas – of the entire Kyushu expressway system. That was it. Not very promising, I thought. I opened up the expressway map, but nothing in it could tell me where to go. Even with a navigator, I would have been no less clueless.
Twenty yards of linen are worth one coat.
“Say, Hana-chan, wouldn’t it be better to go back? This is going to get awfully sticky.”
Nagoyan had only called my name when he was in a bind, when, for example, he was feeling too down even to go to the hospital kiosk and wanted me to buy him some juice. But now his car was headed down the road, with music blaring. The weather was perfect, and if I hadn’t had that voice in my ear, it would have been a marvelous day. Nagoyan didn’t need to look so grim; after all, I was the only one being tormented by “Twenty yards…” But I suppose his bad moods were an unavoidable consequence of his depression.
“Say, where do you live?”
“There,” I replied, pointing in the direction of Kasugabaru.
“Stop talking nonsense.”
Nagoyan was no fool. It was clearly not the way to Jonan Ward.
“All right. Which way is Aso?”
The sudden question surprised me.
“Um. Ower there. South.”
“It’s a famous spot for suicides, isn’t it?”
“Why’re ye sayin’ that? It’s a good place. I wouldna mind goin’ there now!”
“No! You’ve got to go home!”
“Nagoyan,” I remarked with a smirk, “how’d it be if ye were to go back to Gokuraku?”
At this, he suddenly sat up straight, declaring, “I’m never going to go back to Nagoya! That was the whole point of my studying to get into a university in Tokyo.”
“Must be terribly sad fer a Keio boy t’ find himself stuck in Kyushu – even if it is such a grand place!”
Nagoyan bit his lip.
“I’m going back someday to Tokyo – for sure!” he exclaimed, quite as though he were taking an oath of vengeance.
“Well, shall we be goin’ there then?”
Tokyo was all about a fun-filled visit. It wasn’t a place you’d want to live in.
“By car? No way!”
Nagoyan would bite his lip when vexed or frustrated. As he himself was aware, it gave him quite a loveable look, so that when he was really at the end of his wits, I knew so immediately from the way he would throw back his head and narrow his eyes. He was rather good-looking but his face tended to be divided between upper and lower portions, so that when he forced a smile, it was only with his mouth. When he was feeling pleased with himself, he would raise his eyebrows. And when he was annoyed, his eyes and nose would go off in their own directions, as though a game of pin-the-features-on-the-face were being played. To know his true emotions, I had to observe the upper portion; what he wanted people to see was revealed in the lower portion. I wasn’t very good at explaining it all to him, and when I did, he exclaimed, “Please don’t be scrutinizing me!” Still, as I could see from the shy smile on the upper half of his face, he was pleased at being poked and prodded in this way.
“Shall we take the expressway?”
Twenty yards of linen are worth one coat.
Twenty yards of linen are worth one coat.
“No way! They’ll be on the lookout fer us there!”
I really thought so. I was sure of it.
“Come on! You’re getting paranoid.”
“They’re bound t’ be checkin’ the bullet train and th’ expressways. The highways are th’ only roads that’re safe.”
“What shall we do then? Turn back?”
Nagoyan’s eyes narrowed, a sign that he was frightened.
“Gettin’ caught means bein’ put in private rooms.”
“Then how about this…?”
Nagoyan flipped the turn signal and took Route 386. I didn’t know where we were heading, but this had clearly been a fork in the road.