Tuvalu (4 page)

‘Can we not go on it?' I asked.

‘It's fun.'

‘Can we not, please?'

‘You're just scared.'

From this point the queue took fifty-four minutes. I timed it to take my mind off the so-called ride. We followed the patrons in front of us—a young anxious boy and a bored, beautiful girl—through makeshift lanes, up stairs and into the mechanical bowels of the machine. Attendants waved us forward, all perfectly relaxed. We waited for our cabin to be vacated by a trendy couple still absorbed in conversation. Then I let Mami climb in, and the instant she was seated she started talking.

‘I love this thing. Sometimes when I'm sad I get in alone. They never try to force anyone in with me. I get the whole cabin to myself and spend the loop thinking about reasons not to jump. You're not the only one who thinks about falling, about dying.'

‘Not now, please.'

‘But there are always reasons not to jump, so I end up back on the ground, feeling better.'

‘Can you not talk, please?' I ducked my head to enter the box. The attendant locked us in, walking alongside our cabin on a long boarding platform. He checked to make sure the door was secure.

‘Enjoy your ride,' he said in polite, emotionless Japanese, before turning to the cabin behind.

We were seated on opposite bench seats, knees up high. While I inspected the lock on the door, Mami played aimlessly with her rubber band. It was a miserable lock. Aside from the fact it could not be opened from within, thus preventing an easy suicide, it was wholly inadequate—the sort of catch commonly found on flyscreen doors. But there was no time to complain. In a matter of seconds it was just the two of us trapped in a cabin smaller than a golf cart. Below, the queue swung out and away. People's features became indistinguishable and the cabin swayed in the night breeze. I tried to sit as still as possible. Mami, however, stretched out on her bench seat, unfazed by the interminable increase in altitude. She seemed to be staring out over the bay. I dared not follow her gaze.

‘Beautiful, isn't it?' she said, her voice loud in the enclosure. ‘I only ever look out like this if I'm happy.'

‘And if you're not?'

‘Then I look out and down,' she said. ‘But don't worry, I'm happy.'

My throat felt tight. There was no air in my chest. I wished Mami would shut up, but she kept on talking about previous trips up and around the wheel.

‘Once,' she said (just as I felt we must be nearing the full 115 metres), ‘once, I rocked a cabin like this the whole way round.'

‘Oh-don't-say-that-now.'

‘Like this.' Mami grinned. First she made only small movements, shifting on her seat. Then she stood up and started to swing the booth backwards and forwards, throwing her weight into it.

‘Jesus-fucking-hell-sit. Sit!'

‘Relax, will you?'

‘Sit!'

Laughing loudly, Mami increased the momentum of the cabin's swing until I could anticipate each rise and fall—up, down, levelling out, up again and down, like a ship in heavy seas. She was unrelenting, throwing herself into it. I wanted to vomit.

‘The floor's strong,' she said. ‘Look!' She began jumping as if on a trampoline, open palms striking the low roof. Every time she jumped, pulling up her knees, I felt sure she would simply vanish—fall noiselessly to her death.

‘And this little lock here—'

‘No!'

‘—on this door.'

I was too horrified to stop her. All I could do was watch as she lined up the flimsy door and, still smiling, dropped a shoulder. Without the slightest hesitation she let herself fall, holding her shoulder firmly forward so that it slammed into the top of the door. The cabin shuddered and I screamed. Bile filled the back of my mouth.

Somehow, miraculously, the thing held. Mami was knocked down onto the floor, laughing hysterically and slapping at her leg. I retched again, the taste of vomit strong.

‘Fuck you,' I managed to say.

After this excitement the cabin quickly resumed its regular sway, but I spent the journey down worrying it had sustained damage, that it would drop from the wheel. Whenever Mami tried to speak I ordered her to shut up. If she moved, I threatened to punch her.

Later, finding our way home, I felt a surge of anger I could not articulate. It welled in my chest. Sitting in the Yurikamome train, Mami said nothing. It had finally occurred to her how upset I was. I vaguely regretted having threatened to punch her but she showed no sign of anger. Instead she seemed to have forgotten everything, giving the impression I was being a bore, even a disappointment. Eventually we reached Shinbashi Station, where Mami had to change trains. We walked to her platform. Her train was preparing to depart, doors open. Expressionless commuters stood packed inside like cattle awaiting slaughter, occasionally exchanging positions but mostly moving on the spot. More and more pushed their way in, making space where there was none and opening phones in preparation for the trip.

‘Can we buy ice-cream?' Mami asked. ‘Normally I buy ice-cream after Odaiba. We can both get out of the station again without losing our tickets. I'll talk to the stationmaster.'

‘I need to go home.'

‘Suit yourself.' Mami backed into the carriage, the train doors sounding their usual piercing warning. Men found a way to accommodate her, happy to have her body pressed against theirs, and glanced at me as if looking for envy.

‘Goodbye,' I said.

Mami, pulling the feathers from behind her neck and keeping her eyes fixed on mine, seemed sad for the first time. ‘But I'm taking your jacket,' she said as the doors hissed shut.

How to Kill
a Cockroach

I
met my first girlfriend, Tilly, while killing (or trying to kill) a cockroach. Hardly romantic, but with us little was. We were best friends from the outset.

This took place well over a year after I moved to Japan, towards the end of my second month in Nakamura's. My room was overrun with cockroaches and I was holding fort with nothing more sophisticated than an old
Time
magazine. Tilly found me trying to upturn a wardrobe Nakamura-san had prudently nailed to the floor.

‘What the hell are you doing?' she asked, leaning in my open doorway, arms crossed. She was a tallish, pale, bony girl with freckles and vaguely curled red hair which she kept under control with a few strategically placed hairpins. Her green eyes kept me staring at her face long after I had intended to look away.

‘What am I doing with what?' I asked.

‘With that wardrobe?'

‘There's a cockroach under it.'

‘And you're going to kill it?'

‘With this magazine,' I said, ‘if I can get a clean swipe at it.' I pointed beneath my wardrobe and shrugged.

‘You're Australian?' she asked.

‘Yeah. You?'

She nodded. ‘Tilly.'

‘Noah.'

‘Nice to meet you, Noah.'

I stood and dusted off, but she did not offer to shake hands.

‘You're new?' I asked.

‘No, I live near this room. Can I tell you something about cockroaches? I don't know if it's true or not, but it might help.'

‘Help would be good.' I sat heavily on my bed.

‘Well,' Tilly continued, ‘from what I've heard, when a cockroach gets scared—which I think we can pretty safely say this one is—it lays eggs. So even if you do find it and kill it, its children'll soon be running all over the place.'

‘What would you have me do?'

‘You need chemicals …' Tilly's voice tapered off and her eyes wandered across the room, taking it in, the starkness of it. They lingered on the wardrobe.

‘What?' I asked defensively.

‘Last night I thought I was going to die. I was lying there and I thought, I'm going to die. Your wardrobe just reminded me.'

‘The earthquake?' I had forgotten this quake. It had been strong enough to rouse me and I had dozed through the aftershocks, dimly aware of my window rattling in its frame.

Tilly nodded. ‘I have a wardrobe exactly like yours but no bed. So I was lying on the floor on my futon, too scared to move, looking at this wardrobe and trying to decide what it would hit first—me or the opposite wall. It was nailed down. I checked afterwards. But at the time I didn't know that. So I was wondering all sorts of crazy stuff. Who'll find me? What will they find? What facial expression will I have?' She grinned lopsidedly. Her teeth were crooked but beautifully white. I loved this smile right away, just as much later I would love other imperfections in her: the hundreds of brown, almost black moles that coated her thin, milk-white body, or the way she took up new hobbies like great handfuls of sweets, stuffing them into her schedule and spitting them back out half chewed.

‘I can't afford chemicals,' I said, returning to the original topic, which had never quite left my mind.

‘Well, you might as well give up now. I read somewhere that if all the governments of the world pooled their funds they could never hope to eradicate cockroaches. You, with only your magazine, don't stand a chance.'

‘You seem to know a lot about cockroaches.'

‘Not really.'

‘Do you own spray?'

‘Of course.'

‘Can I use it?'

‘Now?'

‘I want to hit this wardrobe with it.'

So we went to Tilly's room, collected her spray, returned and draped a misty chemical plume over my wardrobe. Tilly waved her hand in the air, pleading for me to stop, but I kept my finger down. I did great sweeps of the room like a crop-duster. Swooping, banking, then coming in again.

‘C'mon,' she said. ‘Let's find something to do until the smell clears.'

‘Like what?'

She dragged me out of the room and into the corridor, which also smelt strongly of bug spray.

‘I don't know,' she said. ‘Let's get lunch. Find a nice—'

‘I can't afford nice.'

‘Well, from a convenience store then. Surely you can afford that?'

‘I guess.'

We walked to the nearest 7-Eleven, outside of which a young, pretty girl in uniform was emptying the recycling bins. She tried with both hands to hoist a plastic bag full of empty bottles from the biggest bin, her elbows out, then dropped it and let out a soft, displeased grunt. We entered without helping her.

The store was devoid of customers. The elderly man behind the counter was busy stacking cigarettes. He looked oddly satisfied with his job, as if it suited him perfectly, and greeted us with genuine warmth. We ambled to the section selling box lunches and, while debating what to eat, heard an ambulance arrive. The sirens caught our attention. We stood in front of the porn magazine section staring out the window, watching an ambulance pull up in front of a generic brown building across the road. Two abnormally stocky Japanese men climbed out, each with ‘Fire Brigade' written on their uniform.

‘What are they doing in an ambulance?' Tilly asked, confused.

‘I have no idea.'

For a moment she was quiet. ‘I don't like ambulances,' she said finally.

I waited but there was no story. We continued to watch, absorbed by the unfolding scene. The two firemen approached a rotund elderly lady. She wrenched up the sleeve of her tracksuit and pointed into the brown building. Words were exchanged. The two men nodded gravely, then unfolded a stretcher and wheeled it inside. The elderly woman remained by the ambulance.

‘So,' Tilly asked, while we waited for something more to happen, ‘why are you so poor?'

‘That's a long story.'

‘We have time,' she said.

‘True.'

‘Unless it's private.'

‘Not really. My last company hired me in Australia to work here. They helped me get a visa and apartment and all that, but decided not to renew my contract after a year. That was about three months ago. In other words, I was fired.'

Finally settling on
onigiri
rice triangles, we moved towards the counter to pay.