Yukiko Motoya - The Lonesome Bodybuilder - Stories

I hung up the suit jacket on a clothes hanger and moved toward the bedroom with Zoromi.

My husband was sitting with his back against the headboard, dressed in T-shirt and sweatpants, playing on the iPad again. Even though it was daytime, he had the curtains shut tight.

“What happened to work?” I was secretly exasperated. If he was here, why hadn’t he answered me?

“I’ve been feeling kind of sluggish.” My husband didn’t look up from the game. His voice was so faint, it was nearly drowned out by the tinkling sound of the coins.

“You should see a doctor.” I picked up a pair of socks from the floor beside the bed. As soon as I said it, though, I found myself doubting whether it was really the kind of problem a doctor could help with.

“San, what would you do if I died?”

I’d moved toward the window to draw the curtains, but I stopped and turned around. “What are you talking about?”

“Uwano told me something his wife said recently, when it turned out her dog needed surgery. She said that if the dog died, she’d be more upset than if he died.”

I pictured Uwano’s rosy, macaque-like face. That must have been a blow.

“I feel like you’d be pretty indifferent too, considering,” my husband said.

Without replying, I flung the curtains open. Sunlight leapt into the room through the glass. My husband looked up at me for a moment, but the shafts of light and the dust rising from the bedclothes prevented me from seeing his face clearly.

“Could be a summer slump,” he said, eyes back on the screen.

“Could be a summer slump,” I said.

“Something good to eat might do the trick,” he said.

“Something good to eat might do the trick,” I repeated, and left the bedroom, which was suffused by my husband’s smell.

But his condition didn’t improve. His color looked worse and worse every day. He was managing to go to work but didn’t seem to be sleeping well. Even his once-formidable appetite dropped off, and he lost weight. He went to a doctor but was only told, noncommittally, that it could be a case of late-summer slump.

I tried to get my husband to quit playing the game. But he said that would only make him feel worse, and he continued to collect the tinkling coins as if he’d been possessed.

“It’s a mantra,” Kitae said, pulling the tab on a canned coffee.

“A mantra? The game?” I said, shuffling my butt around on the bench, which was damp from the previous day’s rain.

“Yes. I think your husband’s trying to shut all his troubles and worries and anxieties out of his mind. Which is why he needs to tap-tap-tap all the time.”

“You mean like in the story of Hoichi the Earless,” I said.

“I hadn’t even thought of that, but maybe. Of course, there’s also the possibility he’s desperately hiding from some kind of temptation.”

“Temptation?” I was surprised.

“Yes, temptation. You haven’t noticed anything?”

The only possibility that the word “temptation” brought to mind was the issue of his ex-wife. My husband hadn’t mentioned her since that one conversation, and I’d assumed the whole thing had blown over. But what had actually happened?

Kitae looked at the dogs playing and chasing each other around. “I’d be doing everything I could for you, if I weren’t so distracted myself,” she said, and sighed. “You’re going through such a difficult time too—I’m so sorry,” apologizing for the fourth time that day.

We were setting a date to abandon Sansho.

Kitae had been postponing it every Sunday, saying, “We’ll wait until it’s just a little cooler,” but the situation had finally come to a head. Their whole apartment smelled foul, and a neighbor had raised a complaint.

Kitae had grown haggard. “So, Gunma Prefecture,” she said, as though she were trying to work up some enthusiasm for the idea.

“Yes. I haven’t been there myself either, but as far as I can tell online, it looks like there are several species of animals living there too.”

“Do you suppose there are bears?”

“It is a mountain, after all.”

“Yes,” Kitae said, and sighed deeply again. “I’m so sorry. You must excuse me. When you’ve gone to so much trouble.”

Maybe because the evening was slightly cooler, there were more dogs in the dog run than usual. Kitae wasn’t saying anything more, so I watched the dogs and drank the coffee, which had gone warm.

I was listening to the voices of children laughing when Kitae said, “I’ve been thinking about how little it takes to bring happiness crumbling down. I couldn’t have imagined any of this would happen when I decided to get Sansho. To have a husband and a cat to live with, that was everything I wanted. I thought I was all set. Who would have thought the cat pee—! It just makes you think,” she said. “Cat pee, of all things!”

A dog barked, and one of the dog owners who had been chatting nearby pointed to what the dog was looking at, and said, “Dragonfly! Dragonfly!”

“Maybe I ought to try to disappear into a game, myself,” Kitae said. The way she said it, I couldn’t quite take it as a joke.

I left the apartment complex to shop for dinner. Ever since Kitae’s recommendation, I’d switched over to shopping at the local shops on the main street. Prices were higher than at the supermarket, and it was more trouble paying separately at each shop, but even so, I felt like taking time and trouble over something added dimension to my bland life.

The way I was living now was like being exiled on an island. The isolated island was certainly a kind of paradise, with abundant fruit trees and animals I could frolic with to my heart’s content, but even so, I’d occasionally be overcome with longing for where I used to be. When I was newly married, I felt that the island would ruin me if I stayed on it, and I often seriously considered escape. But then I’d quickly remember about having to fight for fruit or endure the petty discomforts of living with others, and I remained a drifting resident of this utopia, cut off from everyone else.

When I turned the corner of the flower shop, a brightly colored rose moss caught my eye. Now that it was September, the plants and flowers on display were starting to have an autumnal feel. The word Kitae had used earlier—“temptation”—resurfaced in my mind. Picking out tomatoes at the grocery store, I tried to conjure up an image of my husband’s ex-wife, whom I’d only seen in photographs, to picture her propositioning him, but before it could happen, my husband’s face started to collapse. The whole scene seemed so completely unlikely.

The prospect of one day finding myself more upset by losing a pet than a husband—like Uwano’s wife—hit much closer to home than the worry that my husband would get back together with his ex.

As I hunted through a cardboard box for the shapeliest daikon, a boy of grade-school age slipped past me and said, “Here you are, mister,” and handed a scrap of paper and a one-thousand-yen note to the shopkeeper.

“That’s today’s, then. Well done, lad. See you again tomorrow.”

The boy took the bag of vegetables and the change, and left the shop with a sullen expression on his face.

Now that was a shopping technique I hadn’t considered, I thought admiringly, but then I accidentally made eye contact with the shopkeeper, and feeling awkward, I said, “I’d like some bran pickle, please. One eggplant.”

Maybe what was tempting my husband wasn’t the ex-wife, but a voice that said, There’s no need to live life just keeping up the appearance of being human. The thought came into my head as I looked down at the shopkeeper’s baseball cap as he crouched to get my pickles. “I’ll throw in the turnip tail for free,” the shopkeeper said, and stood up holding the bag of pickles, bringing the sharp, sour smell of fermented rice bran to my nostrils.