The Long Highway Pt. 22C

It became apparent quickly that I couldn't offer Akemi an upper middle-class lifestyle, comfortable one with a lot of options, I mean.

Early on we went to look at an apartment to rent. It was commodious, full of light. We stood in the unfurnished living room with its good, open view and were talking about possible drawbacks- Was shopping near enough? What about transportation- but generally liking the place, almost giddy about moving there- when we learned it was the wrong one. We (I) had made a mistake. We should have gone to the apartment across the hall. That was the place the real estate agent had meant to show us. It was different from the other, equally full of light with wood floors laid precisely- care in evidence- but much smaller just a studio. You looked for more rooms in vain but saw that beyond a kitchenette and bathroom there was just one, one room and that was it.

Akemi and I couldn't possibly live in the studio as a couple. We'd have to keep searching, find something else.

The real estate agent wasn't apologetic. After all, he had more customers to serve, plenty who could afford something even better than the first apartment, the one above our means (reality strikes!) Akemi and I had liked, imagined ourselves living in, even talked about the possible drawbacks, as if we had a choice of whether to take it or not.

Akemi was ardent with me, but would she have been more with someone who could offer her more open possibilities, view to a near future she could explore unrestrained, a life without the limits imposed by my lecturer's salary, somebody who wielded more economic clout?

At the college, there were doubts as well. I took her and her class out on a field trip and as we left I had to tell the group where to come back, a different room, just downstairs from the one we'd been using. My impulse was to explain the location but realized that wouldn't be enough, I'd better tell the room number (which I didn't know offhand, as I'd easily been able to find the place without it). Unless I stated the number, some students, one or two at least, would miss the room; some others might take advantage of the lack of clarity to skip the class.

I had to show Akemi I was competent at my job. If things went wrong, if I stood in the corridor outside the open door of the new classroom looking around for students still not there, Akemi would be standing by silently watching me, judging, not from any meanness of spirit on her part- she didn't have much of that- but because it would be a surprise to see a college teacher at such a loss through no one's fault but his own.

And I had a new misunderstanding with a colleague that day, small wiry Indian man I didn't know well, bright with penetrating eyes, intelligent, not unfriendly but no-nonsense. He worked in a different department from mine. We didn't see each other often.

Striking up conversation. I said to him on impulse, "Did you hear what the leading candidate for president did?"

And he looked at me for a moment, wondering if- god forbid- I was a supporter of the self-described fascist seeking the highest office in the land. I quickly set him straight on that point.

"I read it in the paper," I said and pointed to the screen of my phone I'd just been looking at.

The candidate had asked a member of congress to do something in support of his campaign.

I'd found the legislator's riposte funny and wanted to tell someone, but under scrutiny of that colleague I suddenly couldn't remember it. "I can't help someone who's trying to destroy the government I'm part of." That was the gist but the words weren't the same, were something along the lines of "I'd sooner sell my soul to the devil" but better, wittier.

The congressperson had laughed at his own deft handling of the corrupt politician's request for a favor, but my colleague didn't. The young Indian professor (higher than my rank of lecturer) looked at me strangely. I couldn't tell if his poker face would open in a smile or an excoriation. Either seemed possible. In the end, he held his peace, which was probably just as well.

It was true that the would-be dictator posed a dire threat, nothing amusing about it, though a sense of humor can sometimes help the sense of dread when nothing else does.

We were in a lounge area with tiered dark blue-carpeted space to relax on, kind of like a stage, one part higher and set further back than the other. It had picture windows looking upon a small courtyard with little green, none but some grass along the circumference. The square cloistered area appeared unused. I'd never seen anyone there, though doors must have led out to it. The view offered nothing to the eye except the exteriors of adjoining brick buildings (though the space itself was good to see). The Indian colleague sat on the lower part of the "stage" toward the front, past which I stood facing him. Seeing me, he'd looked up from what he was reading. I'd recognized him already.

In my near-dizziness at the short-circuited conversational exchange now finished, I overheard someone else in the room say as part of a conversation separate from ours, "I google when I'm unhappy." What a statement for our times!

from Akemi to Nelson

translated by Hiroko

We met and embraced fiercely. At first the ferocity was that of friends who'd badly missed each other but it soon turned sexual. We were like two crocodiles thrashing together.