Tuvalu (8 page)

Now, by night, the palace grounds formed a black void with only a minimum of lights scattered throughout. The street directly below me was hidden from view. I had to press myself to the glass and peer straight down to glimpse it. Vertigo turned in my stomach, but despite it I felt safe. The world was comfortably cut off from me. I could look down on it with the cosy objectivity of a scientist peering through a microscope.

As I turned away, however, Tilly came to mind, focusing a growing sense of my own treachery. I tried to determine how it was she spanned the height, how it was she leapt up, intruding. I realised with surprise that I wanted to share my exploration of the hotel room, relate it back to her like an excited child.

I decided not to stay the whole night, and to forget about my jacket. This seemed the only sensible course of action. In return for walking away I struck a deal with myself. I would say nothing to Tilly about my two hotel visits so long as I never contacted Mami again. At four a.m., before the commuter trains started up, I wrote Mami a brief note and used a magnet to attach it to the small fridge where she kept milk for morning coffee.

Dear Mami,
You fell asleep. I let myself out. You can keep the jacket.

Cheers, N.

‘Cheers' seemed a poor choice of word but nothing else fit.

I found my way to Tokyo Station and onto an early train, sleeping throughout most of the journey home. At one point I worried that Mami was sitting beside me, talking. Then I realised I was sliding from my seat and, coming to, banged the back of my head on the window. Commuters stared, but Mami was not one of them. She had not followed me, and my relief was laced with disappointment.

A Loan

I
was at this time still working half days in a large public primary school, teaching English on rotation and moving from one class to the next. It was not normally a difficult job, so long as I had no interest in doing it well. Mostly I led the students in song (always the same song, since teachers tended to select ‘Ten Little Indians') and was paraded around like any other atypical attraction—say a fireman, or a large, shaggy white dog. I liked my students. They tagged along beside me, reaching up for my hand, and asked about my hobbies, exact eating habits and blood type, as if my difference could be pinned to one of these three key variables. I liked the less dogmatic teachers, too. But I was not at all sorry to take two days off after visiting Mami's hotel. I cited non-specific illness and the principal —either kindly or thinking it some virile foreign bug— told me to recuperate fully before returning to amuse.

It was during this hiatus that I first met Harry.

He found me draped over a TV room chair watching a talk show in which a panel of women detailed their stand against dependence on men, listing exactly which gifts they would and would not accept from a suitor. At least, this was my best guess at the topic. It could just as easily have been an erudite discussion of the impressionists, with an emphasis on Sisley.

‘You understand Japanese?' Harry asked from the doorway, impressed.

‘Sometimes.'

‘I'm Harry.'

‘Noah.'

I stood and offered my hand, and thirty-something Harry, who came up to my neck, shook it firmly (as if his handshake was a point of pride). His curly light-brown hair was thinning on top and he had a bulbous nose. He was in no way handsome, with small, calculating eyes and a coin-slot mouth, but there was something oddly amiable about him.

‘You like sport?' he asked.

Not having expected this question, I hesitated. ‘Mostly.'

‘Great. I'm looking for someone to watch sport with around here, to share a beer with. I just arrived. How about hockey? Watch it?'

‘From time to time.'

Harry fell casually against the doorframe. ‘Great sport, hockey,' he said. ‘Just like that Australian Rules football of yours. Mean but fair.'

‘What room are you in?' I asked, wondering how he had picked my accent.

‘Two-ten. Just off the boat from Hawaii.'

‘Two-ten? You're my new next-door neighbour. I thought that Subramani was still in there, but—'

‘Subramani? He the hockey fan?'

‘I don't think so. Why?'

‘There's a hockey poster in there. That's what got me thinking about hockey.'

‘Oh that. That's been there forever. Gretztky, right? Subramani tried pulling it down, but it rips the paint. No one wants to pay Nakamura-san.'

‘Nakamura?'

‘The fat old Japanese woman over the road—the one who runs this dive.'

‘Oh her,' Harry said, head lolling in what I took to be a nod. ‘She didn't say a word, just wrote a price and how long I could stay.'

‘You're unlucky you're not black. She likes the black guests. They're taken care of.'

‘You're kidding?' Harry massaged his ample belly.

‘No. She loves black foreigners—male or female. They get the best the place has to offer. The rest of us are an economic necessity.'

‘You're serious. How about that.'

At that moment, appearing from nowhere, Lin Huang slunk past in one of her moods. As always, she appeared not to have a rumple of fat on her emaciated frame. Bones jutted out beneath her skin as they do from drought-stricken cattle, scarcely hidden by her nightgown. Her hollow face spoke of a deep mistrust and both her feet dragged beneath her dolefully, like runty animals beaten in their infancy.

Harry gave her a warm smile. ‘Hello,' he said. But she dropped her head and hurried on upstairs, arms clasping tightly at her torso.

‘You'll get used to her,' I said. ‘She's in the room opposite us. I don't know why you've been put up there with me. It's sort of the International Floor. Nakamura-san normally puts the Americans downstairs.'

‘Perhaps she doesn't consider Hawaii part of America.'

‘Perhaps.'

‘You know,' he said without warning, ‘I'm thinking about working my way into international trade.' Harry began examining random objects with the fierce but fleeting interest of a child—a Japanese magazine, a power point, an empty Asahi ‘Aqua Blue' beer can. ‘I just need to find things I can—' he broke off mid-sentence and peered behind the TV, but seemed not to discover anything especially novel.

‘Find?'

‘Ideas. I've got plenty of capital,' he said, ‘presuming the damn banks get on and make my transfer. What is it with the banks here?'

‘They're not easy.'

‘Well,' he said, ‘soon I'm going to export those toilet seats, the ones at the airport—the heated ones. They're perfect. I have a friend who's a builder. He'll include them in his projects as a sort of extra.' He paused. ‘What about this place? Any hidden gems?'

‘I doubt it.'

‘Mind showing me around anyway?'

‘What, now? Okay.'

I started the tour by leading him down to the basement—dark and dank. Ground water had seeped through thin walls and stale air hung thickly. I pointed out splotches of black, tumour-like moss on the roof and other discolourations smattered across the plaster. Harry nodded at each, then pulled at a tattered cord hanging from the ceiling. He stared expectantly at the room's one bare bulb as if, being Japanese, it might prove saleable. It remained dead and he shrugged.

‘Smells musty,' he said.

‘This is the kitchen section.' I pointed out a rectangular gas stove atop a rickety card table. Harry examined it carefully. He turned all the buttons, one at a time, then picked at blackened noodles scorched to the metal and made unintelligible observations. Inside the griller he found only flakes of aluminium, melted cheese and rubbery chunks of meat.

‘What about that?' he asked, pointing to the basement's only other feature—a ping-pong table. It stood unevenly in a far corner of the room. Missing a leg, this table looked set to collapse at any moment, though in truth it was still quite stable. Moisture had curled the corners of the playing surface, giving it the look of a bizarre Asian antique. The net had been stolen, and both poles had been snapped off and tossed to one side like discarded butter knives.

‘That's for ping-pong, but there aren't any bats.'

We made our way back up the creaky staircase to the American Floor. The rapper 50 Cent roared inside one room but there were no gangstas when we passed, only a weedy, pale boy shooting monsters on a PC. Further up the corridor a fat, black woman and middle-aged man with a basketball were attempting to compile a list of actors with the initials D.Z.

‘Notes of interest on the American Floor,' I said softly. ‘They have the TV room, obviously. They also have sinks in their rooms. And one or two of them have balconies. We have nothing like that.'

We climbed another set of stairs to the International Floor. These stairs were in worse repair than those coming from the basement. I pointed out that one or two of the steps were broken, leaving gaping holes which were difficult to remember when drunk. Harry climbed the last step and came to a halt beside me, panting. We stared along the stark grey corridor.

‘Welcome to the International Floor,' I said, just as Moaning Man stepped from his room.

‘Who's this?' Harry asked.

‘We call him Moaning Man. We suspect he's related to Nakamura-san. Otherwise it's hard to see why she'd put up with him. Normally he just sits and smokes or walks round the block.'

Moaning Man set off in his usual strolling gait. He only ever broke this stroll to slap a wall, normally with the sole of his shoe.

‘Is he dangerous?'

‘Moaning Man? No,' I said without conviction. ‘He's harmless. He lives in his own little world, although walls irritate him.'

Moaning Man passed us, mumbling to himself and lighting a cigarette. His name—which was used by the entire hostel—was a misnomer. His moans contained words. He was perpetually engaged in conversation with himself and now seemed displeased with everything he had to say. His face was set in the deep frown of a man waiting anxiously to counter sustained reproof.

‘Don't ever stand between Moaning Man and a nasty wall,' I said, with a small smile.

‘How am I meant to know which walls are nasty?'

‘There's no way to tell. Assume all walls are nasty.'

Behind us Moaning Man booted a wall and shouted at it.

We hurried on, stopping when we reached the bathroom.

‘This is the only bathroom in the place,' I said. ‘There's a urinal on the American Floor, tucked inside a sort of broom closet. But for everything else, you have to come up here.'

The taps interested Harry. He examined each in turn, then tried to straighten a crooked wall mirror.

‘It's filthy,' he said.

Having been in the hostel a year, I had grown used to what Harry now recoiled at: permanent stains inside the pit toilet, black hair-like grit around the plugholes and mould between every tile. None of it overly perturbed me, except perhaps for toe-prints gouged from the layer of grey slime in the shower recess.

‘Get shower shoes,' I said. ‘And now, if you'll follow me down this corridor to the grand finale …'

My grand finale was nothing more impressive than a bulky vending machine. It sat at the end of the International Floor corridor. Leading Harry to it, I explained the unit had a right to feel cheated. There were over six million vendors in Japan, which meant six million possible locales. Yet this old machine had been placed in a sort of vending machine purgatory. No one used it, but no one wanted to scrap it, either.

‘Left to rot, it's become somewhat confused,' I said. ‘It rejects 1000 yen notes and can't recognise the newer 500 yen coin. Often it gives out Diet Coke instead of CC Lemon, or Pokari Sweat instead of Aquarius. And that's if it does anything at all, which normally it doesn't. I should add, though, it's been known to give out large amounts of loose change. So if you like to gamble, it beats those yakuza casinos in Shinjuku.'

‘That's it?' he asked, laughing. ‘That's your grand finale? There's no temple or anything?'

‘Welcome to Nakamura's.'

Harry suggested we celebrate my tour with a drink. I tried to include Phillip but he was absorbed in lacquering a new model—a small biplane—and wanted nothing to do with me. Probably he was still upset. He seemed to have taken my eating noodles with Mami as a slight, and I regretted sharing the detail.

It was already dark out. Harry and I walked quickly to keep warm, arms folded. Since we had no idea where we wanted to go we quickly ended up in side streets which offered little hope of a salubrious bar. Most bars around here, I suspected, would include feminine company in the drink bill. I explained this to Harry and he listened with interest as a woman on an unadorned, single-gear bicycle, wearing a pleated skirt and conservative high heels, overtook us in the half-light. An intelligent-looking child wrapped in a red coat sat in the booster seat behind her. This child, eyes blank but seeing all, reminded me of a palace guard.