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© D. Lowry Pressly
D. Lowry Pressly
The platform was deserted. Toshio slipped a hand into the side pocket of his unassuming overcoat and fingered his ticket. The glossy finish had been worn off in spots and the edges were beginning to fray like rope; he had been tonguing at this cut in his mouth for months now. The decision had been made, and now it was too late to stay in Tokyo and die.
Spring always arrived late in Neodani. Harsh Japanese snow smothered the high mountain valley long into April. Bare limbs sagged and pines bowed over, snapped at the waist. Life was scarce in the village during the arduous winters. Then, after months upon months of freezing solitude, the thatch of the roofs would become visible, then the bare earth. The trees shed their icy burdens. The snowmelt would send crashing rivers down from the mountains, nourishment for the Usuzumi cherry tree. Her branches would burst open with vibrant green buds. Those pods would soon open up and release petals of the palest, whispering pink. Days would go by, and the flowers would whiten, and finally, the cherry blossoms would turn a light watery ink before floating to the ground below – the snow of spring.
Spring never came to Tokyo. The city only knew one season: grey. Reflective, monolithic monsters dominated the landscape, and seemed the only things stable in the shifty smog. Neon signs breathed milky phosphorescence over hurried, miniature people, reminding them of their flashy corporate deities. Each day, tight-glanced men in hushed overcoats bustled across great latticed crosswalks and filed away into the towering, shiny buildings. For the past forty years, Toshio had been one of these drones.
Daily, he would be rushed through the revolving-glass door and into the expansive lobby of Dasai Inc. The air tasted like nothing and reminded him of hospitals. Smothered by the emptiness, he would walk briskly to the stairwell, beneath the gargantuan corporate logo – an altar with toys on top and bearing the company slogan: “Great Work Is Good Work” – and down the steps to basement level Sub-B. Sitting at his galvanized desk in his galvanized chair, he would spend his days staring at the wall, waiting. Everything was bolted down.
His final day of work was no different. Toshio stared blankly at the cinderblocks in front of him. When he had first been assigned to cubicle Sub-254B, he had stared at the same grey, concrete wall and attempted to count the divots where the dull paint had sunk into the crevasses of the concrete, forming tiny dimple-like imperfections in an otherwise lifeless paintjob. Now, forty years later, they no longer seemed to be random pockmarks in his daily vista, but vital parts of his life, like children or lost time. He saw them in his sleep, and occasionally had dreams featuring individual dents.
Toshio was staring at two of his favorite when the fluorescent buzz of the office floor was shattered by the sound of an empty pneumatic tube suddenly being filled. The tubes had been sending him reports periodically for years now. He didn’t know where they came from, or who sent them, only that he was to transfer the information to his flickering computer screen and feed the paper to the shredder.
With any luck, some kid tried to fly with the mini-jetpack, Toshio hoped. Or maybe, just maybe, a plastic bag suffocation.
He was tired of reading the same boring news day after day. “Toddler. Got rash from Hello Kitty pajamas.” “Six-year. Put eye out with safety scissors.” “Five-year. Ate Ninja Naroki’s head. Got better. Head included.” Most were not so much emergencies as they were inconveniencies, and they vexed Toshio today.
Removing the plastic cylinder from the tube, Toshio willed the paper to be good news, at very least a blinding. As he flattened the scroll, a wave of familiar disappointment swept over him. Some little girl in Hiroshima swallowed a bouncing ball.
“Oh well,” Toshio said aloud, “They can’t all be winners.”
He entered the age, city, toy/product in mention, and complaint into their respective, all-too-familiar boxes on the spreadsheet and instinctively slid the sheet into the shredder. He remembered that when he first began working there, the mechanical ripping noise it made when it ate paper bothered him; it cheese-grated his eardrums. Now, it was soothing, something to put him to sleep; it had a certain bite that white noise lacked.
Menacingly sweet wind chimes dripped out of the company public address system like poisoned honey – time to go home. To his surprise, Toshio felt nothing at this moment of liberation from his workaday life. He did not celebrate as he had so often imagined; his exit was not met with applause and well wishing as he assumed it would be. He straightened up his desk, saved files and shut down his computer, grabbed the old leather backpack from under his desk, shouldered it, and mechanically walked up the stairs, through the lobby and into the grimy night air – he felt nothing.
Toshio paused outside the large entryway for a moment. Gruff sounds and dirty air swirled around him like leaves before a storm. He thrust his left hand into his coat pocket, and fumbled around for a pack of cigarettes. His fingers glanced a glossy slip of paper. Memories and sensations suddenly came rushing back. What the small village looked like at sunrise. The warm, dirt floor of his home. How it felt to breathe beneath the Usuzumi cherry tree. Forgetting the smokes and readjusting his crude knapsack, Toshio Yobari turned quickly on his heel, away from his usual path. A musty breeze on his face, he began to walk, with great, uncharacteristic strides, towards the train station, towards home.
He could hear the train long before the glow of its headlight came into view. The rumbling was distantly familiar, even though it had been nearly half a century since the last time he had set foot on this platform. High-speed monorails and the city subways didn’t use this set of tracks, and Toshio was glad. He was tired of hushed breeze they made when they passed, of the anaesthetized silence that filled the cars. He wanted to feel the earth shake as he crossed the mountains.
A wave of cool air swept over him as the antiquated train came to a hissing halt. The door did not slide open, like on the subterranean bullet-trains, but was opened from the inside by a man wearing a blue uniform and a cap, which, being too small, had to be adjusted with nearly every movement. The doorman strained to keep his neck straight and head still as he took the three steps down to the platform and gestured Toshio inside.
The car was dank and immediately second-class. The carpet was worn through to the steel flooring in spots as Toshio walked down the isle of pea-green and candle-yellow striped benches. He walked to the end of the car without stopping, into the next one, through it, and through two more until he found one that didn’t reek of flight or failure. Stopping at an empty row, he sat down, and scooted towards the window. The hard, blackened crater of a cigarette burn in plastic scraped against the wrinkly back of his pale neck. Turning to check his view, Toshio grasped the dull, red window handle and pulled, but nothing happened. It was only when he removed his hand that he noticed the lock.
Typical, Toshio thought, Everything is bolted down.
Toshio laid his cheek against the cool glass and closed his eyes.
“You alone?” said a voice, surely not to old Toshio. “Excuse me sir. You alone?”
Toshio pulled his face from the window and looked up at the man who, as it now appeared, had spoken to him. He was a small bear of a man, somewhere in the late-middle of his life, wearing a short-sleeved, button-down shirt bearing a plaid that consisted only of different shades of jaundice, and a camera around his neck. He carried two pieces of heavy luggage and a slightly less heavy wife. The tourist appeared to Toshio as an overfed runt of a circus bear who was the main player in a joke that only his captors were privy to.
“Yes. I’m alone”
“Great! Then you won’t mind if my wife and I join you. Nothing like a little company to make a long trip fly, eh?”
Toshio nodded curtly and turned back to the window. The man stuffed his bags into the overhead rack and then, followed by his wife, sat down. Toshio’s view of the platform was obscured by the faint reflection of the tourist, whose shirt seemed to be melting into the seat. The train jerked and began to lumber forward, which was backwards for Toshio, who cursed himself for choosing a seat facing the rear.
“Where are you headed to, sir? That is, if you don’t mind my asking,” the tourist prodded.
“Neodani,” still staring at the window.
“The village? What wonderful luck! Us too. Now we can keep company the whole trip. You hear that honey?” The wife nodded. “What great fortune indeed.” The man paused. “Going to see the Usuzumi I assume? That’s why we’re going. We go every year. What did you say?”
“Home,” Toshio forced. “I’m going home.”
Toshio neglected to tell the man how he had grown up beneath the tree’s expansive wingspan. Nor did he tell of the old house his ancestors, the keepers of the Usuzumi, had built there, before the grass had been bent back or the soil tilled; the house that he had re-thatched as a young man, not knowing that days later he would leave for the city to find a new life. He did not mention swinging from the branches with his younger brother and shaking them, the virginal blossoms snowing down on his little sister, spread out on the grass beneath. He spoke of none of these things.
“Heavens, a local! What wondrous luck we have had today. You hear that dear?”
The wife grunted in the affirmative. The tourist then began to barrage Toshio with questions about the ancient tree; apparently, he knew nothing about it. He wondered if it had really been planted at the head of a buried emperor fifteen centuries ago, or if it really bled if you carved or burned a branch. Toshio told him that, to his knowledge, all the legends were true, but it had been a long time since he had seen the Usuzumi, in or out of bloom.
The man spotted Toshio’s flute poking out of his rucksack and felt obligated to sally every possible query on the subject of the instrument. When Toshio told him that he had carved it out of a branch of the Usuzumi, the tourist fell silent, finally giving Toshio a moment to breathe.
“Really? From the Usuzumi? You jest.” Toshio didn’t reply, just stared down and the poorly-carved, sorrel instrument in his hands. “You’re serious,” he said cautiously. “Incredible. Did-did-did, did it – you know – bleed?”
Grey Toshio paused, slid the flute back into his small bag, and replied.
“There was blood.”
Toshio turned back to the window as the man began to babble about how he thought the circumference of the blossoms was decreasing every year and how that surely must be a sign of the tree’s impending demise. Toshio tried hard to look past the man’s reflection and into the dimming mountain landscape. The snowcaps gleamed like teeth under the bleeding sky. He drifted into sleep as his neighbor began worrying out loud about being too late this year and missing the short-lived cherry blossoms. Toshio dreamed.
He was twenty-three, standing beside a stream at the base of the highest mountain surrounding Neodani. The creek gurgled and laughed as only water from the eternal springs deep in the heart of the mountains can. There were many people there. Women in quiet kimonos paced slowly, vibrating with sobs and questions. Men wearing clean robes clasped their hands tightly, eyes cast downwards. Occasionally, one of them would flick a glance at Toshio, who played a doleful tune on a newly carved flute, and then quickly slash their eyes away from him. The instrument had been a gift for his younger brother’s eighteenth birthday, just days ago. Men and women swirled slowly around Toshio, but his gaze remained fixed upon the two red mounds amid the lush, green grass. The elders chose this spot because the water flowing in the stream ran to the roots of the mighty Usuzumi; they chose it so that the two may live forever in the white bounty of the magnificent tree. A reddened maple leaf floated slowly down from an overhanging tree, wafting in the breeze – back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth – eventually landing silently at Toshio’s bare feet. A wailing splash stole Toshio’s stare from the ground to the creek. Screams and sobs and water and curses and prayers were being flung skyward. It was his mother. The flying water could not wash the tear streaks off her crimson cheeks, and she sat down hard upon the rocks heaving and shaking. HEY BUDDY.
“Hey buddy, wake up.” Fixed on his collar bone, the tourist’s claw and booming voice shook Toshio violently from his slumber. “C’mon now friend, we’re here. We’re finally here.”
Toshio turned away from his window and looked through the blur of sleep interrupted to see who had woken him. Then he remembered his traveling companions; it hadn’t been a dream. After gathering his things, he bid a generous farewell to the couple, slid past them, and walked briskly towards the exit.
The station was drastically more modern than he left it. Wood had been replaced with sheet-metal and bleached plastic molding. The spinning and flipping signs that had so impressed him at a young age had been replaced with digital readouts. There was nobody in sight, and Toshio was glad for that. He walked briskly past the ticket booths and humming vending machines without so much as a sideways glance. The stairs didn’t creak like he remembered as he walked up from the platform and into Neodani.
The night thrashed against Toshio as he stepped outside. He reached into his bag and fetched a scarf, which was nearly as old as he, and wrapped it around his neck. Although it had been a long time and he had never taken a train to the village, he thought he could find the way home. From the high vista of the station, he saw a large, centralized fluorescent glow in the valley below. He imagined that progress had even snaked its way through the mountains and into the village; they probably had erected lights in the town square or something equally as garish and public, proud to play their small part in modernity.
The way was easy enough to find. A long concrete stairway bordered and divided by unpainted steel handrails led from the station door down into outskirts of town. Two more-yellow-than-golden Doric columns with mantle framed the path. A concrete tiger was posted in front of each column, each adorned with an equally sloppy and singular layer of gold paint. Except for the eyes. For some reason, the bulbous eyes had been overlooked. They stared mournfully forward with a sleepy sense of expectation, like abandoned children, waiting for someone who they knew would never return. The pathetic concrete grey slashed through the veneer where tourists had etched messages into the shrine. Toshio paused to read them.
T.s. is loved by P.B.
The characters were sloppy and skewed, surely made with something short and sharp like a sewing needle or pocketknife.
Isamu Hotaka fucked Emi Etsuko. Osaka is very much better than this stupid village. School BLOWS. Professor Katsumoto eats excrement. with his hands. Kagawa Prefecture rules. Akemi my sun/ Melted into cricket tears/ I miss your breath’s dew. Junko sucks good dick. Santa Christmas never lied to me about god. Shit.
Toshio’s eyes swept back to the crudely drawn haiku. The markings were more desperate and hurried than the others. He wondered who wrote it, and if he or possibly she was alone when it was scratched on the lion’s hindquarter. Must have been. The poem stood out amongst the cajoled insults and markers of carnal conquest on the animal’s rear as something singularly saddening and gone, like a fluttering trace of a winter in July, or the Lion’s dull eyes against the cold, blue-black mountain night.
The cries of his traveling companions jerked Toshio from his rumination. Apparently, drunk on the excitement of arrival, they had forgotten to bring their baggage off the train. The right corner of Toshio’s mouth curled upwards in a smug, satisfied half-smile.
Pity, he thought.
Toshio started quickly down the stairs. He tried to take the first two in stride and nearly fell, catching the center guardrail under his arms. With a wrinkled left hand on the cold steel railing, he picked himself up and began to hobble awkwardly towards the bottom. His aged canter had the staccato rhythm of a bad left leg and an eager right, and his joints popped and creaked like an old house in winter. The light shone brighter as he followed the steep path downward.
By the time he reached the valley floor, he was thoroughly exhausted, legs burning from years of disuse. He paused for a moment to catch his breath, checked his pack and pockets – though he never kept anything in his pants – and continued into the town.
Forward momentum, he thought, happy to find something he had lost long before. Can’t lose it now.
The newly paved road shone dully like obsidian as Toshio made his way through the outskirts and toward the iridescent center of town. He noticed that the proud thatched huts he had grown up around had been replaced with white-sided houses with roofs of black tar and shingles. The dirt paths had been scalded with asphalt, which in turn had been salted with cigarette butts and slick candy wrappers. The wind blew harder now at Toshio’s back. He rubbed his hands together and blew into them.
Should have brought gloves.
He remembered reading something about how pace and body temperature were somehow related and began to walk faster. Toshio rubbed and blew into his hands again. He stopped, heard something. It sounded like the hollow popping echo of a child’s drum in a cave. Startled, he wheeled around to see a large and empty Styrofoam cup that had been blown out of an overflowing trash bin rolling and flipping his direction in the wind. It rolled toward Toshio, and suddenly paused, as if inspecting this strange and unnatural interloper. They exchanged puzzled stares, each wondering what the other was doing there. The cup must have thought better of staying. Toshio watched as it sprung back to life, danced a merry circle around his feet, and skipped off down the street. He stood there until it had meandered out of sight. The wind died down again.
As he came closer to the center of town, and the Usuzumi, the houses turned to shops, with large windows displaying postcards, miniature cherry trees, and other such useless bric-a-brac. Toshio did not understand why an isolated mountain village would need a shop pandering to tourists, much less many. He turned a corner past a small shop/noodle house and came face to face with the source of the blinding glow. It was the Usuzumi.
Beneath the tree, separated by about six paces or so, was a host of spotlights illuminating the underside of great tree. Directly behind each light, was a pointed wooden post, and through each of which was strung a thick black rope. A concrete walkway littered with trash cans and park benches encircled the fenced off area. And there the tree stood, drenched in pasty fluorescence, in the center of the ring, its knotted branches supported by large poles, bare.
Toshio stood at the corner, aghast. His childhood home gone and the tree had been turned into a tourist trap. To make matters worse, the man on the train had been right in worrying; only a few petals could be seen, scattered and dying in the leafy grass. Toshio stared at the tree of his youth, now an invalid. He wrung his hands together and blew, forgetting to raise them to his mouth. With heavy steps, he walked toward the sprawling Usuzumi; she was the gnarled, pale hand of a dying woman in the artificial light.
As he stepped over the boundary rope, he was sure that, were it daytime, somebody would have stopped and reprimanded him. He kicked the nearest light with the toe of his black oxford. The plastic casing rattled and the beam wavered, but it quickly returned to its original position. Toshio redoubled his efforts and attacked again, but with the same results. The boughs still dripped the curdled sunlight.
With a primal scream – the samurai might have called it a war cry, were it not so desperate – Toshio pulled his good knee as close as he could to his chest and, with all his might, sent his heel flying towards the light source. The glass cracked. Roaring with every thrust, he stomped on its shining face over and over again, until it went black. Then the next one, and the next, until the undersides of the branches were dark again.
That side was never meant to see light, Toshio thought.
The tree looked less desperate in the light of the half moon, and Toshio, winded again, sat, his back against the massive trunk. He stared at the spot where his house used to be, the spot where there now sat a souvenir booth flanked by garbage cans. Flooded with familiar feelings from Tokyo, Toshio placed his sack on the ground, removed the hard instrument, and rested his head there, under the great Usuzumi cherry tree. Toshio slept. No one came to play the flute.
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