Tuvalu (25 page)

‘What's with this backpack, Phillip?' I asked.

‘For me to know and you to find out, Tuttle.'

‘So you keep saying.'

‘Come on.' He glanced at his watch. ‘Let's get out of here. It's time.'

Phillip led me from the store into a muggy, late summer dusk. The heat showed no sign of letting up or of being swept from the city by a sea breeze. The buildings acted as walls and locked the air into a sweltering steel box, sealing it with airconditioning exhaust.

‘God I hate this city,' I said to myself. People bumped me, bouncing me off walls like a pinball. I almost tripped on a stack of porn magazines and their owner, a toothless bum, grinned. He gestured for me to buy one with a brown, sun-weathered hand. I shook my head.

Phillip—letting the backpack slip from one shoulder— led me onto a large, semi-enclosed pedestrian bridge near Shinjuku Station. From here we could peer down one of Shinjuku's widest and busiest thoroughfares. At its distant end, at right angles, were three skyscrapers, each a little lower than the last, their tops forming steps. As the sun set, metal and glass everywhere had taken on an almost blue hue. There was, however, still enough natural light to mute the narrow backlit advertisements which—in garish pinks, reds, blues and greens—ran up the sides of every building, detailing the companies within. Delivery trucks and cars idled beneath us, waiting for a change of lights. And every footpath swarmed with people, many of them silhouettes in the half-light.

I stared at customers queuing for a meal outside First Kitchen while Phillip gently set down his pack and pulled out a box held together with sticky tape. I watched him tear at the tape and toss it aside, flapping it off his fingertips.

‘What's in there?' I asked.

‘A biplane.'

He pulled away the last of the cardboard and packed inside were indeed the components of a biplane. He worked quickly, snapping the sections together until he was holding in one hand a canary-yellow plane with a red plastic propeller and two tiny metal machine guns. Kicking the backpack aside he began to wind the propeller up. People crossing the bridge either hurried on or stopped to watch.

‘You can't be serious,' I said.

‘Look at the street, Tuttle. It's the widest street on earth. It must be a hundred metres across. And it just goes on and on.'

‘But the engine—'

‘There isn't one. The propeller's on a rubber band.'

‘Still …'

After winding it up Phillip released the propeller and flung the plane from the bridge. For a moment it was beautiful, this one small balsa craft flying silently over so much clutter and chaos, so much metal. There was something immensely graceful about it. The setting sun glinted over its taut, painted wings. Phillip watched it closely and made no attempt to run.

‘What about these people?' I asked, not taking my eyes off the biplane, which held straight and level. ‘They saw you build it—throw it.'

‘Worry, worry, worry,' Phillip said. ‘They're Japanese. They're not going to do anything.'

And he was right. Around us, as if they had come simply to see the plane, people took up positions and watched it fly. Likewise pedestrians down below began to notice it, mouths ajar. Although tiny, the yellow biplane was so alone in the vast space above the road and between the endless walls of buildings it seemed to catch people's eye. It continued to fly in a straight line, over crowded intersections and upturned heads. More and more people saw it and nudged those beside them.

Slowly at first and then with increasing speed the plane began to lose altitude, finally dipping sharply. A few people moved towards it and Phillip laughed. A second later the thing exploded—a sharp, far-off pop and puff of white smoke. Balsa rained dimly in the growing dark. I saw one man duck and then rise cautiously, and when I turned my head we were again the centre of attention.

‘C'mon,' Phillip said. ‘We could have the eyes of the whole city on us in a moment.'

But I only smiled. For some reason I was suddenly relaxed. I saw the biplane had already been forgotten by most.

‘Walk this way,' Phillip hissed. ‘Act normal.'

No one chased us. Laughing, we toasted the historic flight with pints of Guinness in an Irish bar, toasted it as if we were aviators, two pioneers. But later the drink turned on us and we sat arguing about the details—distance, height, the volume of the explosion—until we tired of each other's company and went our separate ways.

I burped quietly without meaning to and smelt the sushi I had eaten for lunch.

Nakamura-san had indeed vanished.

‘Hey,' I said to Tilly, who lay on her bed pretending to read. ‘Nakamura-san's gone.'

She nodded without looking up. ‘Weeks ago, Noah.'

‘And …' I drew the word out, ‘I can't find a room to rent.'

‘Keep looking.'

‘No. I mean—'

But Tilly checked her watch, swore and sat up, face groggy.

‘I have to work. Can't you step outside while I get changed? Actually, go find something to do.'

‘Why?'

‘You're bugging me, standing there like that. Do something.'

‘Like what?'

‘Like find somewhere to live.'

I ended up watching Japanese TV for half an hour and, returning to the room, found that Tilly had left for work. I stood at the window, staring across into Nakamura-san's apartment. I thought of the morning Mami first appeared, of the winter cold and Nakamura-san beating her futon. Even then her apartment had lacked personality, lacked life. Now, though, it was all bare concrete, nothing more; the lime-green balcony rail was the only obvious colour. The rooms were both hollow and I stared into them for close on a minute, morose, until I resolved to break in.

The sliding door had two small, rectangular windows at its top, one of which had been left open for ventilation. It seemed possible to exploit this and I set my mind to doing so. Apartments like Nakamura-san's—which required hefty, non-refundable deposits—were usually vacant for months before being let. I will not deny my pending eviction drew me to the place like a cat to fish, but there was something else too. This gloomy space across the two-metre alley seemed to be in communication with an equally hollow void somewhere deep inside me. The two were acting like magnets, this sense growing only stronger as I wrenched up my window and climbed onto the sill.

But the height of it all gave me cause to pause—to think. Height—zooming up at me, faceless, depthless, wrapping itself around my heart and tugging lightly so my body recoiled backwards in panic—had to be considered. My toes curled around the sill's edge and my hands gripped the sides. I crouched there, window digging into my back, worried I might faint, worried I might topple forward like a dead bird from a branch.

In the end it was to avoid exactly this unceremonious death that I took a sharp breath and leapt out into midair. I came crashing down onto that lime green rail, wedging it between my chest and upper arms and scraping around with both my feet until one found a hold. I was too scared to take a breath. All the impetuous bravado that had facilitated my leap was gone. It was only a fear of being spotted from the street below that gave me the courage to pull myself over the railing, from which position I flopped like a hooked fish onto the cold concrete and resumed breathing.

After a minute's rest I stood and checked for witnesses. There were none. I tried the sliding door but it was locked. Whoever had locked it, had done so quickly, however. The bottom lock had only been slotted halfway into the groove on the adjoining door, leaving the handle sticking out at a seventy-five-degree angle. All I had to do was slide something heavy like a hammer through the open top window and drop it onto the bottom lock to flick it open. I picked up what little I had at my disposal—plastic slippers. I turned them over in my hands, one after the other. Both were heavier than expected, their bases thick. I decided to try to use them. I poked one through the open window and let go of it. But it missed and fell with a thud onto the tatami matting inside.

‘Shit.'

I picked up the remaining slipper and repeated the process. The toe struck the handle squarely and I heard the latch fall open with a dull clunk. When I tugged on the door it slid back without difficulty.

‘Ha.'

I quickly picked up both the slippers and dropped them back onto the balcony before stepping inside.

The largest room smelt of cleaning products. I guessed that someone—maybe even Nakamura-san, if she was still alive—had cleaned the place from top to bottom before departing. There was no dust or grime. I stared at the white walls, at the beige cupboards and wood-veneer ceiling. I wandered from empty room to empty room—the living rooms, the kitchen and shoulder-width bathroom.

Here, standing over my missing landlord's immaculate toilet, I urinated while trying to decide what to do next; I had not devised a plan beyond getting in. Where was Nakamura-san? It made no sense. If dead, was someone else going to take over the hostel? Were we to be evicted? Or was she perhaps coming back?

I returned to the first of the living rooms, sat down on the tatami and took a deep breath. These living rooms were separated from one another by nothing more substantial than thin, patterned sliding doors. I traced the pattern with my finger—an oriental scene featuring ducks in flight. I should have been scared, afraid of being found out, but I had no such concerns. For the first time in weeks nothing distracted me. I flopped onto my back and lay still, staring up at the fake grain of the wood-veneer ceiling. The lampshade and bulb had been removed from the light fitting and I suddenly felt sure whoever cleaned the apartment was never coming back.

Then a remarkable thing happened—I slept.

I am not sure exactly how long I slept but when I woke it was dark, which meant it must have been three or four hours at least. It had been years since I had slept so long without stirring, without jolting on the strings of muddled dreams. Confused, I rolled onto my side, aware of a tingling in my arm. I sat up and this same arm flopped into position beside me, lifeless and heavy. I had to wait for it to recover its full movement before standing, stretching and walking through the kitchen—past the deep, silver, distinctively Japanese sink and mounted hot-water unit— towards the front door. I opened the in-built, metal mailbox and, as hoped, found two identical silver keys. Without any hesitation I snatched one up, shut the mailbox and opened the door.

I locked it behind me and, pocketing the key, walked back towards the hostel, passing the old man and his even older dog on the way. As always, the decrepit animal was circling, making tentative attempts to raise its tail and lower its anus over the gutter. Its back legs shook precariously and the old man, smoking a cigarette and holding the leash with both hands, casually propped the creature with an equally shaky foot.

Harry had no intention of paying me back. He had the money—this much was obvious because he was frequenting a variety of ritzy snack bars and often bringing back the hostess from the first for sex. Sometimes, lying awake at night listening to Tilly snore, I would hear him with this girl. She had a piercing, put-on giggle. Harry always used Japanese with her, having somehow picked up a basic command of the language in mere months. Then they would fuck—loud, raucous, pounding sex that never failed to wake Tilly, so the two of us could stew on things we would have preferred to forget.