Mr. Aoki looked on contentedly, still smiling.
The coach opened the box to pass out the chocolates, and the swimmers quickly pressed in on all sides. Clamoring noisily, they took their pieces, called “Thank you” to Mr. Aoki, and tossed them into their mouths.
Why doesn’t he hurry up and come on back? Mrs. Aoki thought, but her husband continued to stand among the swimmers. Eventually, the coach held the box out to him and asked, “Would you like one?” Even her husband had sense enough then to say “No thanks” and excuse himself, and he finally returned to the far corner of the pool where his boys were playing.
Was he a big kid, or a fool, or what? Mrs. Aoki wondered as she watched him come.
When the Aokis started home in the gathering dusk, the swimmers by the pool turned toward them and called out in a chorus of charming voices:
“Goodbye! Thanks again!”
Looking rather embarrassed, Mr. Aoki returned an awkward wave.
The leaves of the Chinese tallow trees glowed an eerie green in the lingering light of the evening sky. As the family walked along beneath those leaves, Mrs. Aoki sensed the gloom slowly returning to her husband’s face. Even as she pretended not to notice, she could feel her own face sagging into much the same expression.
The two boys walked ahead, pulling the dog behind them. Now and then they would call out the dog’s name. The energy in their voices grated on Mrs. Aoki’s nerves.
“Talk to me,” she said. “All this silence only makes it more depressing.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he said, as though noticing for the first time. “But what shall I talk about?”
“The bars,” she said.
He stared at her in bewilderment.
“Tell me about the bars you go to a lot.”
“There’s not much to tell, really.”
“Never mind that, just tell me about them. You know, now that I think of it, you’ve never said a word about the places you go— your favorite bars and whatnot. So come on,” she said, putting more cheer in her voice, hoping to raise both of their spirits. “Tell me about the places with the pretty girls where you spent all that stupid money.”
She was being deliberately flippant, but her husband grimaced. It brought her a twinge of pleasure.
“There were lots of places,” her husband said, recovering himself.
“Start in wherever you like, then, and take them in order.”
So, in the light of the moon filtering through the wisteria over the patio, Mr. Aoki began with a place he frequented when he didn’t have much money.
Two sisters ran the bar—the older one beautiful but brusque, the younger not at all pretty and very slow mannered. The place always looked as though it had gone out of business two or three days before, but if he went on inside and perched himself tentatively on one of the bar stools, the younger sister would soon emerge from the room in back. The way she came out invariably had a “Who cares?” sort of air about it.
He would half expect her to tell him they were closed, but she would sluggishly duck under the counter. After tidying up a bit, she would finally turn around to face him. At first he had thought she must be in a bad mood, or maybe she wasn’t feeling well, but he soon learned this was just her normal way.
For example, if a patron were to say, “No matter when I come, this place has about as much life as an empty depot in a cowboy movie,” she would break into a broad, happy smile.
The older sister was much the same—except that she seemed to care even less than the younger and wouldn’t come downstairs at all unless she had gotten herself into a really good mood.
As a bar, it made for a very odd atmosphere. If someone came charging in the door ready to party, he’d likely be thrown so completely off balance by the dull and indifferent reception, he’d be stopped dead in his tracks, unable either to forge ahead or to back out.
The bar’s drawing card was its cheap prices. Of course, for the patrons to be willing to put up with such indifferent service, the prices would quite naturally have to be low.
But Aoki did not frequent the bar solely for its prices. For him, the real attraction of the bar was the older sister. The very first time he went there with a friend, he’d been struck by the older sister’s resemblance to the French movie star M, with her worldly looks and otherworldly air. In her beautiful features he found something a tiny bit scary, but he also found something supremely romantic. What would it be like to go for a stroll down deserted nighttime streets with a woman like this? he wondered, and from that moment forth a vague desire arose in his heart. Before long, his wish was fulfilled.
He bought tickets to an international swimming competition in which a famous American swimmer was scheduled to appear, and he gave one of the tickets to this sister to see what she might do. He hadn’t really expected her to come, but when he arrived, she was already there.
Afterward they went from one bar to another, then hailed a cab and drove aimlessly around the late-night city streets. It wasn’t a “stroll,” but he could say that he had gotten his wish.
As they drove, the girl told him in a somber voice about living with her father in Harbin as a child. In the summer he would take her to the Isle of the Sun, where they mingled with Russian families for a day of fun on the banks of the muddy Songhua River. On the way home they stopped at a restaurant facing the promenade along the river, and at a table right in front of the orchestra her father would drink mug after mug of beer while she chewed on black bread. Together they gazed at the river in the twilight.
The girl spoke with her cheek pressed against Aoki’s shoulder. Now’s the time to kiss her, he thought, only half listening to her story. But what if he tried to kiss her and she got angry? That would ruin everything. Too worried about what terrible thing might happen if she got angry with him, he could not bring himself to do it.
Never again had another such opportunity presented itself. Several times he had wasted expensive tickets to the ballet or the symphony, hoping for a second chance. But as Aoki continued to observe the girl over the next few months, he came to understand that she had not been her usual self on the night of the swimming competition. If he were ever to have a chance, that night had been it.
In the days and months since, she had become like a castle with mirror-slick walls offering no holds to grasp. Each time he saw that miraculous smile of hers, he’d be filled anew with a longing to somehow make her his own. But he could not gain the faintest hint of what she might be thinking. Were her sights set on marriage, or did she not care? Had someone else already won her heart, or was she available?
Especially frustrating were the days when she knew perfectly well that Aoki was waiting but still chose not to come downstairs. Times like that, he was left sipping drearily at his beer as he carried on an awkward, slow-moving conversation with the younger sister.
Even worse was when neither of the sisters appeared, and a prune-faced old lady took their place. If the disgruntled Aoki asked the sisters’ whereabouts, old Prune-face would tell him the older one had a visitor upstairs and the younger was in bed with a bad toothache, or something of the sort. In a fit of irritation Aoki would sometimes settle in on his stool for an even longer stay than usual, drinking to the old woman’s pouring. The old woman must have felt sorry for him at times like this: she would only charge him for one beer even when he had had three.
By probing Prune-face for information, Aoki managed to verify the sisters’ claim that the older sister had no patron or lover, and that they’d opened the bar on money from their father. He got her assurance, too, on the occasion when she said there was a visitor upstairs, that the man was merely a friend of their father’s and not anyone of questionable repute. Still, it irked Aoki to no end