Jan 31, 2021
No Wonder Pt. 02
“No Wonder” part two
Another time switch, back to the days before we married, when I was seeing both Akemi and Andrea, the woman I’d been with when we met and kept seeing afterward- for too long. Akemi found out- I told her about my difficulty leaving Andrea, trying to let my former girlfriend down easy. Let’s be honest, above-board, I thought. A mistake. Akemi went back to Japan to do some thinking on her own. She had a a trip home in the works anyway, plans with friends and family- but confusion about our involvement pushed up the date of her departure- no, disappointment did; Akemi seldom became confused- and she wasn’t sure when or even if she would return here.
I don’t mean to complain or sound self-pitying but the months when she was in Japan were tough ones for me. I was dealing with a lot in my life then, having work problems and moving from one apartment to another, on top of everything else putting up with prospective new tenants marching through my home as if it were a public space for viewing, a museum or what have you.
Places on the open market were expensive. I’d looked at one with Akemi before she left and, when asked, named a rent I thought reasonable. I was sitting with one of the owners on the living room couch- antique, carved wood that looked newly upholstered in crushed velvet, dark champagne-colored. This was in the landlords’ home, where we’d gone to talk about money and sign any documents if it came to that; the apartment they had put up for rent was a block and a half away, in the same good neighborhood as the one where they lived but far more modest. I could never afford anything like that multi-room townhouse floor-through of theirs. The place was decorated at great expense, a little too elaborately than I would have preferred; you felt you couldn’t quite breathe in there- all those surfaces sucked up the available air- and that you shouldn’t touch anything; the couple had very good taste, if on the precious side; maybe they were involved in the arts; anyway they certainly shared an appreciation for the finer things in life. Yet when it came to real estate, both were all business.
My host, with greying hair done up chicly in a bun, older woman with a sweet, younger woman’s face, made me welcome. When I named my price- naming a figure from out of the blue, on the low side, of course, the other owner, her husband, came around behind the couch and said over my back- I hadn’t seen him there before he spoke- that the building manager had told them the lowest they should accept was five hundred dollars above the figure I’d given. They were French, on the far side of middle age, nearing retirement, wanting extra security more income- monthly rent- would bring. The wife said she liked Akemi and me and would consider charging us less than the going rate because having people they felt good about living in the apartment mattered to them a lot.
“Money is only money, after all. It doesn’t match feelings.”
But in the end they didn’t make the generous offer. The husband said they might regret it later.
Money is money, after all, and doesn’t yield to sentiment, he concluded in so many words.
Without Akemi at my side, I saw little prospect of landlords or rental agents warming to me and offering a good deal. I’m just a guy, on my own not especially charming, charismatic. In Akemi’s company I feel better and, ironically or not, that probably makes me more appealing to others. She certainly was with or without me.
I was enamored of Europe when we met. Those French prospective landlords may have sensed as much and liked me because of it. My passion for Akemi changed my focus some. I shifted direction radically. Europe still interested me but for the moment didn’t exert the fascination of Asia, Japan in particular.
Later she and I would go to Germany to visit my old friend Jeffrey who lived there, and we’d look at places to rent- just on a lark; there was no plan to move to that city; getting visas would have been difficult or impossible in any case. As expected, rents were very expensive- more so than back home- but salaries proportionately high; my friend Jeff could afford the house he and his wife Astrid shared.
It was a pretty nice setting. There were a lot of kids around when we arrived. Jeff and Astrid didn’t have any but visiting friends had brought theirs; the children were less reserved than adults, of course, openly curious about the foreign guests and funny and playful and friendly. We all moved outdoors to enjoy German sausages, grilled pale brown, and the presence of the kids made the rest of us act less like adults. Germans are said to lack spontaneity. It was refreshing to see them cutting up and I too had fun fooling around on their lawn. We played badminton.
In our casual tour of apartments to let, Akemi and I saw one that was reasonable and comfortable, pleasant, in a house, but there was a restaurant on the first floor. It would have been noisy, we speculated.
I noticed and remarked to Jeffrey that people in the European city where he resided looked relaxed, happy. “Different from our stressed, angry compatriots back home.”
His life as European provoked some envy in me, but I didn’t in the least begrudge him his success. It reflected no lucky breaks. He’d taken initiative, effected the change he wanted.
Jeffrey taught a course at a German university, and on his invitation I sat in one afternoon to watch him at work. He taught in English, and the students spoke our language with surprising fluency. He could engage them in real conversation, didn’t have to simplify things. He asked interesting, challenging questions about ethics and judgment, and the men and women in class gave serious, thoughtful answers.
But that’s another story.
—
Five years later now, present tense, Sten is on the scene, in the background anyway.
Friends of Akemi came to visit on the weekend after she and he met at her studio to talk about the film he was making with his friends and her.
Life looked normal.
A pretext for the gathering was a handover of keys. Hiroko and Tetsuo were leaving town the next day for a week and were entrusting to Akemi the care of their apartment. She would go feed their cats, water the plants in their absence.
Tetsuo- Hiroko’s boyfriend- talked before the meal about time he’d spent in a French speaking country- former colony of France. He tried to recall some of the language he had learned. We were having chicken for dinner and he was able with difficulty to summon the French word for chicken. “Poulet,” he said at last, triumphant. The word really was somehow profoundly satisfying. Someone else suggested it might instead mean “duck.” “Are you sure?” they asked.
I grabbed the chance to show off my knowledge. I’d traveled.
“The word for duck is ‘canard.’ I remember that from a trip to the southern region. Cassoulet is a main dish there and it has duck.”
I had African students from a former French colony who’d talked to me about their culture, the indigence of the surroundings and the beauty- naturally they perceived some since that was home to them. They described a site they walked by on their way to whatever they did everyday, place on their left visible through a decorative iron fence. The earth rose gently to a view of trees far off, branches silhouetted against the horizon, according to their description. It was a cemetery, they said- “At first we thought the smell was from garbage, but it was the dead”- and spoke of how bodies were buried on top of each other. I reacted with surprise. “I guess I’ve heard that before.” There was limited space so the dead were interred in layers. “I wonder how deep it goes,” I said, and my students laughed while we speculated on the progressive stages of decomposition as the buried went lower and lower.
I had the hackneyed thought: Life is a cycle. I’m older and Akemi younger, and I shoot my seed into her; we lead our lives and love each other. One day we’ll both be gone, but together and separately we connect to something big, beautiful and endless.
Akemi told me later that the French word for chicken, “poulet,” reminded her of “kusse,” the Danish slang for vagina. How did she know that? She’d never been to Scandinavia. She must have learned it from Sten, the Danish math teacher she’d befriended.
That came up in conversation I’d initiated about my writing, specifically about an email that had arrived from the administrator/editor at the site where I post the pages. It was a fairly long message, starting with acknowledgement that I had followed a request to implement suggested changes in format to better fit the site. The editor said she had noticed and appreciated my effort, one I’d made following an earlier email she or another staff member had sent.
Her new one continued. It really was lengthy, taking up at least a page and clearly written by a human being, not a formulaic response of the usual kind, template given to all writer’s with pertinent individual details plugged in. The administrator had in this case obviously taken enough interest in my writing to respond personally, in detail. The message moved from the thank you for my cooperation with the format change request to what seemed praise of my project and advice. I read just a little, got a sense of where it was going and left the rest for later. I wanted to look forward to it, savor at leisure an apparently favorable response to something I’d posted. Who knows? The editor might even have included suggestions for publication of my work off-line, making a real book of it, not just a self-published manuscript like those produced by how many thousands of others, talented or not. Maybe she found my writing that good.
So I was talking to Akemi about the message. She seemed a bit confused, perhaps annoyed, that I had become as excited as I had without having even read the whole thing, knowing what was in it.
“I hope you’re right,” she said when I told her of my grand expectations, hopes I harbored that this email might point a way forward. “But you’re not sure, right?” She wasn’t attempting to burst my bubble, she doesn’t do that, just genuinely perplexed, trying to understand me.
“They never send a long, personal response like that,” I explained, “unless the writing really strikes them. She felt moved to write detailed comments, took time putting down thoughts for me. That in itself means something.”
At the same time the talk contained the unspoken truth that my work had so far not gained an audience. There were no outward signs of success. The very fact that I would make so much of an email from the administrator of an online writing site reflected the paucity of encouraging news.
Akemi faced challenges with her art work but was better positioned than me, as the saying goes. She still hadn’t been offered a one-woman show, had only hung her paintings in group exhibits. She’d sold a few works, not many. The difference between her circumstance and mine was that the merit of her painting was plainly apparent. You could see with your own eyes how good it was. Writing is harder to judge. You sit down and read and even then may not be sure it measures up. Also, there was Akemi’s age. She was younger than me, had a long future. There was no rush for success in her case.
She encourages me, cheers me up. In fact, I don’t need much help. The enjoyment the work gives is its own reward. Of course, sometimes the negative reaction of readers- or their indifference- lowers my spirits. But getting a positive response isn’t a main reason I write.
I’m not sure how that conversation morphed to one about “poulet.” We’d had chicken dinner. The guests were gone.
Akemi said it was the pronunciation of “poulet” that reminded her of “kusse,” the word for vagina in Denmark. The vowel was similar. Both had the long “u.”
She said that “kusse” sounded like a Japanese word, “kusa,” which means “grass.”
What do you know? Live and learn, that is.
The conversation made me horny. What’s more, I wanted to get Sten out of the picture.
We lay in bed side by side facing the same way. I embraced her from behind and reached a hand under the top she wore- the night was chilly- to caress her breasts. Akemi and I turned onto our backs and she felt the hardness of my abdomen. I kept in good shape, exercised both for stamina and strength, and the surface she touched showed the results. Her hand went to my cock, the tip of which she had already felt, as it was erect and extended to my lower abdomen. She rose to her haunches and my hand followed her breasts up with her. The curves, that fine, gold-tanned skin felt so good.
“Why now?” I said as Akemi put her mouth on me.
She pulled back to answer, “It’s been a while.”
“You mean just because you want to?”
Akemi responded this time without a word.
