TIGGER
On the train from Tokyo to Oku-Tama, Flip fell into a conversation with a Japanese man who claimed not to know what Flip meant when he said he liked sushi. Sushi, said Flip. Sushi! The man must be pretending, winding him up. Shaking his head, shrugging. Was Flip pronouncing it wrong? He tried to find the kanji for sushi on his phone, but the man kept shrugging. Flip got off the train at his station feeling hard done by, like someone had got one over. It was frustrating not to know if the man was yanking his chain or not. If it was a joke, okay. If sincere, fine. But which? Then he had to take the bus from the station to the dam, and he found the system for paying confusing. His money went in the machine and it spat out coins, some of which coins needed reinsertion. Too many steps involved. He snapped at the driver, who was trying to help. The man on the train had looked like the man on the news the night before, the man giving a press conference, the man who’d lost his daughter. If you’re out there, honey, we want to know. If something’s happened, we want to know. He started to cry then stopped. If you’re dead, we want to know. Flip thought, would you? That’s why he’d talked to him, but the man had only said You English? You like Tokyo? You like ramen? Sure, said Flip, ramen is okay. What I really like is sushi. Sushi? How could he not know sushi! But when he arrived at Lake Okutama he forgot all that. Gracious, it was beautiful. The sun was out, the sky azure, the cherry blossoms blooming white and pink – gleaming almost holy. The water was a colour Flip had only seen before in subaqueous photographs capturing the famously hidden seven eighths of icebergs. There must be a second sun, he reasoned, at the bottom of the lake, making the water look like that. And to his left the dam stretched out vast and dominating, a solid curving white wall that invited swift descent. He wanted to walk across it. He did. Halfway across the top of the dam he needed to vomit – he leant over the edge, and his hurl flew to the bottom without dirtying the white wall. The nausea disappeared as quickly as it had come, and Flip hoped no one had seen him. He was getting used to vomiting. On the other side of the dam a gate blocked entrance to the path, and Japanese words Flip didn’t understand forbade him access. That was okay. He’d walk the other way, along the road. Google maps said there was a soba place a mile away and he was starving. As they say in England, he could eat an ‘orse.
Back in England, he’d left his wife and daughter. He hoped they realized he wasn’t coming back, hoped they forgave him for it. Gauguin had left his life and family to begin a new career as an artist in Tahiti. Doris Lessing left her two young kids to write in London. Flip was part of an artistic tradition, though he had no artistic ambitions of his own. He thought if he learnt a little Japanese, he might get a job in a coffee shop. He’d gone first to Malaysia, where he’d been attacked on the beach by a pack of crazy barking dogs. He’d barked back, which startled them, and he’d waved a big stick at them, which they avoided, but it wasn’t until he walked far enough away that they completely left him alone. A lot is said against running away, but not enough is said in favour of walking firmly in the opposite direction. There were no stray dogs in Tokyo. They killed them all.
The soba place was a mile away, as long as he kept the lake on his left and the cliff walls on his right. Tokyo’s pedestrians, as a general rule, wait for the lights to change before they take a zebra crossing, even when the road is empty. It had taken Flip a couple of days to get used to that, but now that he had he thought it reflected a great propensity in himself to adapt to whatever life throws at you. There were few pavements, so at times he had to walk along the main road, pushing himself into the rocks when a car rounded the corners too fast. Steel nets covered the rockface, to catch big falling stones. Where the road couldn’t go round the cliffs, it went through them, and Flip ran down the tunnels from one end to the other, thinking if he was going to get hit by a car anywhere it would be there, in the dark. All of the cars looked expensive. Vintage highly-polished European two-seaters driven by older men. Tops down, sunglasses on, leather driving gloves and hair blowing in the breeze. Escaping Father Time. Please don’t kill me, Flip whispered so often it became a chant. After twenty minutes of avoiding death, he reached the restaurant, climbed some stairs to enter, and ordered a lovely bowl of home-made noodles with onsen egg. He savoured the broth, the healing broth, and through the dirty windows he could still see the vibrant lake blue.
Doris Lessing’s childhood nickname was Tigger. The craters on Mercury are named after dead actors and writers – Italo Calvino, Dorothea Lange, Utagawa Kunisada. Paul Gauguin. Benjamin Franklin ran away from his family in Boston to Philadelphia. He published letters under the pseudonym Mrs. Silence Dogood. Harry Houdini ran away from home at twelve. He once wrapped himself in handcuffs, chains and leg shackles and got wedged inside the rotting carcass of a beached sea monster. He freed himself. Who knows what the sea monster really was. Steve McQueen at fourteen ran away and joined the circus. He had a malamute named Mike. Flip knew lots of famous people who’d run away. Nine times out of ten, he’d say, they made the right choice. He loved his wife. He loved his daughter. Every Sunday they woke up at nine and went cycling together to the chocolate croissant shop. He’d never see them again. Never ever ever, see them meet them again. Focus on the soba, the soba tasted good. But he’d never hug his wife in bed again. Never hear his daughter laughing in the kitchen talking with her friends again. Never hold all their hands anymore. Still, not good to think about that. Focus on the soba, the present, the future. As soon as he finished the noodles he paid for them and as soon as he’d paid for them he left. He didn’t like to see the people who worked in restaurants clear his plates away, better not to know what happened at the end of the meal.
He chose not to take the bus back to the station, it was only a ten-mile walk. A popular walk. Lots hiked from the station to the dam, Flip would hike from the dam to the station. There was a river down below, a busy main road up above, countless trees, few people. Very calming, the air smelled like elves had grown it, the path was well-formed, well-signposted, Flip took his headphones out his ears to better enjoy the sounds of the forest. Walking is a meditative process, a time to reflect. Flip thought of the day before he’d left, in the doctor’s office, the way the doctor had composed his smile. His ribs ached, but as he walked the ache grew comfortable. The sun was hot. The leaves absorbed most of the heat. Flip walked from light to shade to light to shade to light.
Two bridges crossed from the path over the river it ran parallel to, one old and holey, one new. You could walk across both of them, and Flip did. Walking to the other end, stopping in the middle to look over the edge and feel the view. Was it called a view when it was directly beneath you? Then turn around at the end and come back. He didn’t know or care where the bridges went, but had to cross them. Bridges needed to be crossed when one came to them. The bridges moved with a rhythm related to his step yet out of time with it. Only two people were allowed on each at one time. It wouldn’t be safe to carry more. Would he one day go back to England? He didn’t know. His family would be disappointed with him, and he wasn’t sure he could weather that. At the time of his leaving, it had all felt so clear, but now it was vaguer, he was less sure he’d made the right choice. Robert Frost, he thought.
Underneath one of the bridges, the second one, he saw a dead body. In Japan the mind leaps to suicide, but was that unfair to assume? It could just as easily have been an accidental fall. Fifty feet down, they might have even survived it. But Flip didn’t think this person had survived. They looked very dead. Flip stared at the body for the longest time, from up there on the bridge. What would it feel like, to fall over the side? They were wearing a red jacket, and it had traveled up their back. Flip wanted to pull it down, make them neat and tidy. It could be the woman from the news report, but was that too convenient? Too cute? As far as he could tell, there was no easy way to the bottom. After about ten minutes, he left. Kept walking firmly away.
I’m sorry, the doctor had said, carefully. He’d packed as quickly as he could, didn’t want his wife to see what was coming, didn’t want his daughter to know. Better they thought he was still out there, still alive. An asshole, but a live asshole. Better they didn’t have to know. What comfort could come from knowing? Just extinguished hope. Was he right, though? Or should he return.
An hour along the walk, ten minutes from the station, he ran into a distraught woman. Did you see my daughter on the pass? she asked.
No, he said. I didn’t see anyone.
She’s wearing a red coat.
Oh yes, then, he said. And he wondered what she’d do when she knew.
Christopher James has had work published online with Split Lip, SmokeLong, Wigleaf, Booth, Tin House and others.
The Boiler 