Tuvalu (5 page)

‘What were you doing?'

‘Teaching English.' We handed over the correct change and I followed Tilly outside. The elderly woman was still waiting by the ambulance for the firemen to return.

‘So why didn't they renew your contract?'

I leant against a warm brick wall. Winter had seemingly let up overnight; a day earlier it had been possible to determine the point at which my breath began to curl upwards, but now it was invisible. Around us people were wearing T-shirts.

‘Who can say? Performance, maybe. I thought the school was a scam.'

‘Why?'

‘I don't know. Most of the students I only taught once. It was always one on one. A student would arrive, take a seat in my little green booth, perform a rote-learnt self-introduction, then show me what page they were up to in the company text. I never saw them again after that. The company discouraged it. They liked to be able to drop students in on whichever teachers were free. It was like a sweatshop that way, only they made a selling point of it. “Learn from the entire English world.” They charged extra for variety but there was no continuity.'

‘How many lessons a day?'

‘Me? Twelve, with five minutes off between each.'

‘Ouch.'

We both stared into a clear, blue sky. Despite my initial reluctance I kept talking. ‘Leaving my subsidised apartment wasn't much fun. I'd become pretty attached to that whole area, even though it was way out in Chiba. I knew where everything was: the supermarket, the convenience store, the chemist, the dry cleaners. I'd memorised them—not the Japanese characters, but cartoons painted on a window or a certain type of door handle. You know how that works. Now I'm lost again.'

‘Do you have a new job?'

‘Not yet. I've launched a sort of employment campaign.'

The two firemen exited the brown building. They were at either end of the stretcher, which now had an old man lying on it. The section of stretcher beneath his head had been tilted upwards and he stared into the ambulance. He was wearing a transparent ventilation mask and looked sleepy. The elderly woman took his hand, then released it, standing back to let the firemen load him in. She looked calm, like maybe this happened a lot.

‘Heart attack?' I asked.

Tilly shrugged. ‘They'll have to say goodbye soon, though. He should just get on and die.'

‘Why?'

‘Because long goodbyes are awful.'

We walked back towards the hostel but decided to keep on going; something about the place felt uninviting. Tilly walked fast with her long, white, freckled arms swinging ahead of her.

‘You walk with one foot sticking out, you know,' she said, turning back to watch me.

‘I know.'

‘It looks funny but I like it.'

I tried to straighten the offending foot but it felt odd. Tilly copied my walk and acquired such a stupidly exaggerated gait I had to laugh. She would not stop mimicking me.

‘So,' she said, shunting herself along, ‘the old hostel must be a change from your apartment?'

‘Quit it.'

‘Quit what?' she asked, affecting a look of ignorance.

‘You know what.'

‘Fine. I can't do it right anyway.'

She pulled her foot in, grinning.

‘And since you're interested,' I said, ‘it's not that bad.'

‘What?'

‘The hostel.'

‘Oh.' She pointed at my foot. ‘I thought you meant having feet that go different ways.'

‘Except for the stray cats—the way they hang round.'

Tilly frowned. ‘I happen to like the cats.'

‘Why?'

‘I just like cats, I guess. Any sort. I tried breeding them for a while.'

‘Here in Japan?'

‘No, back on the farm.'

‘You come from a farm?'

Tilly nodded in a lazy, circular sort of a fashion. I was intending to ask more about this farm, but another question bullied its way in.

‘What about the hairless ones?'

‘Do I like them? I like them especially. They're the toughest of all.'

‘You're definitely the first tenant I've heard say that.'

‘I've been here a while,' Tilly said. ‘Three years teaching English. A lot of people have come and gone, but the cats, hairless or not, have stayed put. Japan can be lonely—the way people just up and vanish. But I'm sure you know that. Were you alone in your last place?'

‘Living alone? Yeah.'

‘How was that?'

‘Good—at first.'

‘At first?'

‘Yeah, at first there was nobody to tell me what to do. No one to clean up for. Nothing to remember. The place was mine. I could let it rot or clean it every fifteen minutes. Whatever I wanted.'

‘And then?'

‘Then … I don't know. I just sort of lost my confidence, I guess.'

‘How?'

‘Too much alone time. It was always just me in this one small room. I found it impossible to meet people. All my neighbours were Japanese and they came and went from jobs. Most said hello but that was as far as it went. If I said anything else they looked at me like I was crazy or going to mug them. They were all shy, afraid. And after a while the outside world began to feel …' I caught myself, finishing dismissively with, ‘I guess I became the same.'

‘The outside world began to feel …?'

I tilted my head as if in protest, then gave the answer. ‘Menacing.'

‘Menacing?'

‘You really want to hear this?'

‘Of course.'

‘Late in the year I started to have nightmares—well, one recurring nightmare. I dreamt that my skin came out in red boils and there'd be yellow pustules in my armpits. I kept waking up, picking at them, scared. I'd think I was ill. I'd wonder where to go for help, what to say, but then they'd vanish. I changed sleeping pills but it didn't make any difference.'

‘What do you take sleeping pills for?'

‘Sleeping.'

‘You don't sleep?'

‘About four hours a night, but never in a single block. Always an hour here, an hour there.'

‘What happened to this dream?' Tilly asked.

‘Shortly before I moved here I decided it was because I was spending all my free time locked inside my apartment. Aside from the odd supermarket run, I never went out. Not for anything. In my defence, there was nothing much to go out for.'

‘You didn't make friends at work?'

‘There was never time. People came in, taught and left—just like me. I tried to make friends with a few different Japanese people, but it wasn't easy. I never got far beyond simple pleasantries. It felt like an invisible screen dropped down, like I was being watched or studied or something.'

Tilly nodded. ‘And the dream?'

I realised then what a change the hostel had made. It had dropped me back into society. There was no longer any way to escape people. I squeezed past them in narrow corridors, heard them laughing, shouting, crying—peeing even. I cooked with them, waited for them to finish with the phone, removed their sodden laundry from the unbalanced washing machine and hurried my meals down beside them. ‘The dream vanished the moment I came here.'

We had walked a small loop and were now coming up on the hostel again. Stray, lazy, hungry cats of all shapes, sizes and colours milled about the entrance hoping to get inside. One—a proud, white thing with a brown face and tail—put its nose to a car bumper. When someone shut the car door it jolted, ran a few metres, then quickly recovered its composure. It looked around threateningly, as if to make sure none of the other cats had noticed its panic, before sauntering off.

There was a sliver of momentary silence, then came a truck slowing for lights and an advertisement broadcast from a passing ramen noodle cart. It occurred to me that Tilly had said little about herself. It was the first hint I would have of her inherent secrecy, her tendency to hide behind a battery of questions.

‘So, what about you?' I asked. ‘How did you come to be here?'

Tilly smiled and pointed to a kitten, a tiny ginger thing. ‘That one's my favourite,' she said, ‘the skinny quiet one with the sad but shiny eyes.'

Vertigo

N
oah, You must be loving having the room to yourself for
a while. I'm enjoying home more than expected, though
Dad is ill. I don't know what it is exactly, but he's quite frail
so I'm going to stay here another month. The farm's looking
good. It's summer here, of course, so it's dry (which means we'll
probably have to harvest soon). When I first got back two
weeks ago, Tokyo seemed close. Now the details come slowly. All
I can picture with any real clarity is you in our ratty little
room. I hope you know how much I enjoy sharing that room
with you, even if we fight.

Love,
Tilly
P.S. Don't repeat the mistakes of last year—there's insect spray
on top of the wardrobe.

I folded up the printout and turned to Phillip. He sat on the edge of my desk, tall, lean and bored.

‘So?' he asked, rubbing at the long, heavily matted hair he had again let turn dirt-brown between photoshoots. He gently set down a large, balsa-wood glider. He had been painting this while I read the e-mail. Everything smelt of chemicals.

‘So …' I started, sliding the printout into my pocket. ‘Don't you see?'

Phillip stood, stretched lazily, then flopped back down onto my bed. For a moment he appeared frozen. The ceiling light in my room had blown and we were both making do with the limited blue light of a small second-hand TV.

‘I can't paint in this fucking light,' he said, sitting up again and nodding at the glider.

‘Do you see?'

‘See what, Tuttle?' he asked, irritated and unable to stay still. He dropped his paintbrush into a clear sandwich bag and sealed it with a sigh. Then from a pocket he plucked a can of beer.

‘For me?' I asked.

‘You don't drink.'

‘I do sometimes.'

‘And it gets you in trouble or makes you sick,' he said. ‘What's this all about, anyway? Talk.'

‘She's serious,' I said, feeling foolish.

‘That's why you said no to ice-cream with Mami? Because of Tilly?' Phillip shook his head and affected an expression of dismay. ‘Scared of heights
and
girls, huh? I still can't believe you did that, Tuttle.'

‘Did what?'

‘Said goodbye to this Mami girl.'

‘Things are serious with Tilly, I guess.'

‘You guess? Things are what you decide they are.'

‘Meaning?'

‘Meaning just that.' Phillip opened his beer. The can hissed white, froth rolling down the back of one hand. He licked it up carelessly. A year earlier, when I first met him, this clumsy clean-up might have surprised me. Phillip's looks and sinewy, sculpted body advertised a certain dexterity, intellect and panache which did not tally at all with reality. He was a complete klutz, a man with only rudimentary control of his body. And he was a nerd, too. The glider on the floor was testament to this. Given wood, glue and a desk he could go days without eating, manically cutting and pasting. The problem was Phillip hated all this about himself. He preferred to live up to people's first impressions wherever possible and masked what he lacked in coordination and intellect behind a confident, often callous air.

‘You look like shit,' he said.

‘I'm tired. The boys in my primary school are trying to stick their grubby pointer fingers up my arse again. They do it whenever I turn around.'

‘Why the …?'

‘I have no idea.'

Phillip took a long slurp of beer. For a moment, nothing more was said until anxiety forced my hand.

‘So what should I do?'

He shrugged. ‘All I know is,' he said, ‘it should've been me this Mami girl came to, not you. She's obviously just looking for a ride. But you're no good for that. You're too damn serious. That's your problem. You didn't even bed her.'

‘Definitely not.'

‘Jesus.'

‘There was the other, though.' I gestured as if shaking dice in my half-open hand.

Phillip forced a superior laugh. ‘A little hand job? Tuttle, Tuttle, Tuttle. Anyone'd think you have two families the way you're going on—one in Tokyo and one up in the hills. Sure, that's a nice enough e-mail from Tilly, but you've got to make up your own mind.'

I felt anger surge in my upper chest. I was a year his senior but nineteen-year-old Phillip had fallen into his comfortable routine: condescension carried in brusque, brutal advice.

‘First of all, I don't know when it became serious with Tilly. I always thought the two of you were lonely and screwed each other to keep out the cold. But forget her for a minute. What's up with this Mami bird? You must like her. If you didn't, you wouldn't be so twitchy.'

‘I've told you the whole story, more or less. She hit on me in a bar.'

Phillip raised a single, dubious eyebrow. ‘So you're sticking to that?'

‘I was drunk and—'

‘—she took you to her place.'

‘Yeah. We talked about furniture and fashion and … I don't know … stuff. It was good—relaxed.'

‘You've told me all that.'

‘Then she started undressing. Not seductively, but like we'd been living together for years. She didn't hide a thing. I didn't want to look. Well, I did. But I didn't feel I could. I thought that would be … I don't know, perverted. I just kept on talking about furniture.'

‘I thought you said she lived in a hotel. What was so exciting about her furniture?'

‘She does, but it's nothing like a hotel room. It's more like a private apartment near the top of a hotel.'

‘Which part of Tokyo?'

‘Near Tokyo Station.'

Phillip whistled. ‘Money.'