He knelt down and scooped up a handful of sand which he sifted through his fingers back to earth. He did this again and again. The chilly, uneven touch of the soil reminded him of the last time he had held Mr. Tabata’s emaciated hand.
“I won’t be alive much longer, Yoshiya,” Mr. Tabata said in a voice that had grown hoarse. Yoshiya began to protest, but Mr. Tabata stopped him with a gentle shake of the head.
“Never mind,” he said. “This life is nothing but a short, painful dream. Thanks to His guidance, I have made it through this far. Before I die, though, there is one thing I have to tell you. It shames me to say it, but I have no choice: I have had lustful thoughts toward your mother any number of times. As you well know, I have a family that I love with all my heart, and your mother is a pure-hearted person, but still, I have had violent cravings for her flesh—cravings that I have never been able to suppress. I want to beg your forgiveness.”
There is no need for you to beg anyone’s forgiveness, Mr. Tabata. You are not the only one who has had lustful thoughts. Even I, her son, have been pursued by terrible obsessions… Yoshiya wanted to open himself up in this way, but he knew that all it would accomplish would be to upset Mr. Tabata even more. He took Mr. Tabata’s hand and held it for a very long time, hoping that the thoughts in his breast would communicate themselves from his hand to Mr. Tabata’s. Our hearts are not stones. A stone may disintegrate in time and lose its outward form. But hearts never disintegrate. They have no outward form, and whether good or evil, we can always communicate them to one another. All God’s children can dance. The next day, Mr. Tabata drew his last breath.
Kneeling on the pitcher’s mound, Yoshiya gave himself up to the flow of time. Somewhere in the distance he heard the faint wail of a siren. A gust of wind set the leaves of grass to dancing and celebrated the grass’s song before it died.
“Oh God,” Yoshiya said aloud.
thailand
There was an announcement:
She was hot and sweating. It was like a steam bath, her whole body aflame, her nylons and bra so uncomfortable she wanted to fling everything off and set herself free. She craned her neck to see the other business-class passengers. No, she was obviously the only one suffering from the heat. They were all curled up, asleep, blankets around their shoulders to counter the air-conditioning. It must be another hot flash. Satsuki bit her lip and decided to concentrate on something else to forget about the heat. She opened her book and tried to read from where she had left off, but forgetting was out of the question. This was no ordinary heat. And they wouldn’t be touching down in Bangkok for hours yet. She asked a passing stewardess for some water and, finding the pill case in her pocketbook, she washed down a dose of the hormones she had forgotten to take.
Menopause: it had to be the gods’ ironic warning to (or just plain nasty trick on) humanity for having artificially extended the life span, she told herself for the
Soon another announcement came over the PA system. In English this time.
A passenger must have taken sick. For a moment Satsuki thought of volunteering, but quickly changed her mind. On the two earlier occasions when she had done so, she had merely had run-ins with practicing physicians who happened to be on the plane. These men had seemed to possess both the poise of a seasoned general commanding troops on the front line and the vision to recognize at a glance that Satsuki was a professional pathologist without combat experience. “That’s all right, Doctor,” she had been told with a cool smile, “I can handle this by myself. You just take it easy.” She had mumbled a stupid excuse and gone back to her seat to watch the rest of some ridiculous movie.
Still, she thought, I might just be the only doctor on this plane. And the patient might be someone with a major problem involving the thyroidal immune system. If that is the case—and the likelihood of such a situation did not seem high—then even I might be of some use. She took a breath and pressed the button for a cabin attendant.
The World Thyroid Conference was a four-day event at the Bangkok Marriott. Actually, it was more like a worldwide family reunion than a conference. All the participants were thyroid specialists, and they all knew each other or were quickly introduced. It was a small world. There would be lectures and panel discussions during the day and private parties at night. Friends would get together to renew old ties, drink Australian wine, share thyroid stories, whisper gossip, update each other on their careers, tell dirty doctor jokes, and sing “Surfer Girl” at karaoke bars.
In Bangkok, Satsuki stayed mainly with her Detroit friends. Those were the ones she felt most comfortable with. She had worked at the university hospital in Detroit for almost ten years, researching the immune function of the thyroid gland. Eventually she had had a falling-out with her securities analyst husband, whose dependency on alcohol had grown worse year by year, in addition to which he had become involved with another woman— someone Satsuki knew well. They separated, and a bitter feud involving lawyers had dragged on for a full year. “The thing that finally did it for me,” her husband claimed, “was that you didn’t want to have children.”
They had finally concluded their divorce settlement three years ago. A few months later, someone smashed the headlights of her Honda Accord in the hospital parking lot and wrote “JAP CAR” on the hood in white letters. She called the police. A big black policeman filled out the damage report and then said to her, “Lady, this is Detroit. Next time buy a Ford Taurus.”
What with one thing and another, Satsuki became fed up with living in America and decided to return to Japan. She found a position at a university hospital in Tokyo. “You can’t do that,” said a member of her research team from India. “All our years of research are about to bear fruit. We could be nominated for a Nobel Prize—it’s not that crazy,” he pleaded with her to stay, but Satsuki’s mind was made up. Something inside her had snapped.
She stayed on alone at the hotel in Bangkok after the conference ended. “I’ve worked out a vacation for myself after this,” she told her friends. “I’m going to a resort near here for a complete rest—a whole week of nothing but reading, swimming, and drinking nice cold cocktails by the pool.”
“That’s great,” they said. “Everybody needs a breather once in a while—it’s good for your thyroid, too!” With handshakes and hugs and promises to get together again, Satsuki said goodbye to all her friends.
Early the next morning, a limousine pulled up to the hotel entrance as planned. It was an old navy blue Mercedes, as perfect and polished as a jewel and far more beautiful than a new car. It looked like an object from another world, as if it had dropped fully formed from someone’s fantasies. A slim Thai man probably in his early sixties was to be her driver and guide. He wore a heavily starched white short-sleeved shirt, a black silk necktie, and dark sunglasses. His face was tanned, his neck long and slender. Presenting himself to Satsuki, he did not shake her hand but instead brought his hands together and gave a slight, almost Japanese, bow.
“Please call me Nimit. I will have the honor to be your companion for the coming week.”
It was not clear whether “Nimit” was his first or last name. He was, in any case, “Nimit,” and he told her this in a courteous, easy-to-understand English devoid of American casual-ness or British affectation. He had, in fact, no perceptible accent. Satsuki had heard English spoken this way before, but she couldn’t remember where.
“The honor is mine,” she said.
Together, they passed through Bangkok’s vulgar, noisy, polluted streets. The traffic crawled along, people cursed each other, and the sound of car horns tore through the atmosphere like an air-raid siren. Plus, there were elephants lumbering down the street—and not just one or two of them. What were elephants doing in a city like
