after the quake

The three stared in silence at the mountain of driftwood. The sheets of newspaper flared up, rose swaying in flames for a moment, then shriveled and went out. After that there was nothing. It didn’t work, thought Junko. The wood must have been wetter than it looked.

She was on the verge of losing hope when a plume of white smoke shot up from the pile. With no wind to disperse it, the smoke became an unbroken thread rising straight toward the sky. The pile must have caught fire somewhere, but still there was no sign of flames.

No one said a word. Even the talkative Keisuke kept his mouth shut tight, hands shoved in coat pockets. Miyake hunkered down on the sand. Junko folded her arms across her chest, cigarette in hand. She would puff on it occasionally, as if suddenly recalling that it was there.

As usual, Junko thought about Jack London’s “To Build a Fire.” It was the story of a man traveling alone through the snowy Alaskan interior and his attempts to light a fire. He would freeze to death unless he could make it catch. The sun was going down. Junko hadn’t read much fiction, but that one short story she had read again and again, ever since her teacher had assigned it as an essay topic during the summer vacation of her first year in high school. The scene of the story would always come vividly to mind as she read. She could feel the man’s fear and hope and despair as if they were her own; she could sense the very pounding of his heart as he hovered on the brink of death. Most important of all, though, was the fact that the man was fundamentally longing for death. She knew that for sure. She couldn’t explain how she knew, but she knew it from the start. Death was really what he wanted. He knew that it was the right ending for him. And yet he had to go on fighting with all his might. He had to fight against an overwhelming adversary in order to survive. What most shook Junko was this deep-rooted contradiction.

The teacher ridiculed her view. “Death is really what he wanted? That’s a new one for me! And strange! Quite ‘original,’ I’d have to say.” He read her conclusion aloud before the class, and everybody laughed.

But Junko knew. All of them were wrong. Otherwise, how could the ending of the story be so quiet and beautiful?

“Uh, Mr. Miyake,” Keisuke ventured, “don’t you think the fire has gone out?”

“Don’t worry, it’s caught. It’s just getting ready to flare up. See how it’s smoking? You know what they say: ‘Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.’ ”

“Well, you know what else they say: ‘Where there’s blood, there’s a hard-on.’ ”

“Is that all you ever talk about?”

“No, but how can you be so sure it hasn’t gone out?”

“I just know. It’s going to flare up.”

“How did you come to master such an art, Mr. Miyake?”

“I wouldn’t call it an ‘art.’ I learned it when I was a Boy Scout. When you’re a Scout, like it or not, you learn everything there is to know about building a fire.”

“I see,” said Keisuke. “A Boy Scout, huh?”

“That’s not the whole story, of course. I have a kind of talent, too. I don’t mean to brag, but when it comes to making a bonfire I have a special talent that most folks just don’t have.”

“It must give you a lot of pleasure, but I don’t suppose this talent of yours makes you lots of money.”

“True. None at all,” Miyake said with a smile.

As he had predicted, a few small flames began to flicker at the center of the pile, accompanied by a faint crackling sound. Junko let out a long-held breath. Now there was nothing to worry about. They would have their bonfire. Facing the newborn flames, the three began to stretch out their hands. For the next few minutes there was nothing more to be done but to watch in silence as, little by little, the flames gained in strength. Those people of fifty thousand years ago must have felt like this when they held their hands out to the flames, thought Junko.

“I understand you’re from Kobe, Mr. Miyake,” Keisuke said in a cheery voice as if the thought had suddenly popped into his head. “Did you have relatives or something in the Kansai earthquake last month?”

“I’m not sure,” said Miyake. “I don’t have any ties with Kobe anymore. Not for years.”

“Years? Well, you sure haven’t lost your Kansai accent.”

“No? I can’t tell, myself.”

“I do declare, you must be joking,” said Keisuke in exaggerated Kansai tones.

“Cut the shit, Keisuke. The last thing I want to hear is some Ibaragi asshole trying to talk to me in a phony Kansai accent. You eastern farm boys’d be better off tearing around on your motorcycles during the slack season.”

“Whoa, I sure rubbed you the wrong way! You look like a nice quiet guy, but you’ve got one hell of a mouth. And this place is Ibaraki, not ‘Ibaragi.’ All you Kansai types are ready to put us eastern ‘farm boys’ down at the drop of a hat. I give up,” Keisuke said. “But seriously, though, did anybody get hurt? You must have had somebody you know in Kobe. Have you seen the news on TV?”

“Let’s change the subject,” Miyake said. “Whiskey?”

“You bet.”

“Jun?”

“Just a little,” Junko said.

Miyake pulled a thin metal flask from the pocket of his leather jacket and handed it to Keisuke, who twisted off the cap and poured some whiskey into his mouth without touching his lips to the rim. He glugged it down and sucked in a sharp breath.

“That is great!” he said. “This has got to be a twenty- one-year-old single malt! Super stuff ! Aged in oak. You can hear the roar of the sea and the breath of Scottish angels.”

“Give me a break, Keisuke. It’s the cheapest Suntory you can buy.”

Next it was Junko’s turn. She took the flask from Keisuke, poured a little into the cap, and tried a few tiny sips. She grimaced, but chased after that special warm feeling as the liquid moved down from her throat to her stomach. The core of her body grew a touch warmer. Next, Miyake took one quiet swallow, and Keisuke followed him with another gulp. As the flask moved from hand to hand, the bonfire grew in size and strength—not all at once, but in slow, gradual stages. That was the great thing about Miyake’s bonfires. The spread of the flames was soft and gentle, like an expert caress, with nothing rough or hurried about it—their only purpose was to warm people’s hearts.

Junko never said much in the presence of the fire. She hardly moved. The flames accepted all things in silence, drank them in, understood, and forgave. A family, a real family, was probably like this, she thought.

Junko came to this town in May of her third year in high school. With her father’s seal and passbook, she had taken three hundred thousand yen from the bank, stuffed all the clothes she could into a Boston bag, and run away from home. She transferred from one train to the next at random until she had come all the way from Tokorozawa to this little seaside spot in Ibaraki Prefecture, a town she had never even heard of. At the realtor’s across from the station she found a one-room apartment, and the following week took a job at a convenience store on the coast highway. To her mother she wrote: Don’t worry about me, and please don’t look for me, I’m doing fine.

She was sick to death of school and couldn’t stand the sight of her father. She had gotten on well with him when she was little. On weekends and holidays the two of them had gone everywhere together. She felt proud and strong to walk down the street holding his hand. But when her periods started near the end of elementary school, and her pubic hair began to grow, and her chest began to swell, he started to look at her in a strange new way. After she passed five-foot-six in the third year of junior high, he hardly spoke to her at all.

Plus, her grades were nothing to boast about. Near the top of her class when she entered middle school, by graduation time it would have been easier to count her place from the bottom, and she barely made it into high school. Which is not to say that she was stupid: she just couldn’t concentrate. She could never finish anything she started. Whenever she tried to concentrate, her head would ache deep inside. It hurt her to breathe, and the rhythm of her heart became irregular. Attending school was absolute torture.

Not long after she settled in this new town, she met Keisuke. He was two years older, and a great surfer. He was tall, dyed his hair brown, and had beautiful straight teeth. He had settled in Ibaraki for its good surf, and formed a rock band with some friends. He was registered at a second-rate private college, but hardly ever went to