The Game in the Past. John Zeugner
answer. At 10:40 he called the front desk to ask if there were message for him from Guade.
“Professor Guade has checked out from the hotel,” the clerk said in slow, hyper-articulated English.
“Checked out? You mean left?”
“So. So, so,” the clerk answered.
“He is no longer at the hotel, is that it?”
“Yes. He has gone.”
“Where did he go?”
“Pardon?”
“Where did he leave for?”
“For?”
“Never mind. Did he leave a message for me, Professor David Moran. Perhaps an envelope?”
“Just a minute, please.”
Moran watched the blinking neon of the station area through his window. The business hotel room was barely five by ten feet.
“Did you say, Molan?”
“Yes, Molan. Molan,” Moran answered emphasizing the Japanese miss-pronunciation.
“There is a phone number on the paper marked for Professor Molan. Would you like it?”
“Yes, please.”
When the clerk gave it to him Moran thought he recognized the exchange—an area near Shinjuku station. Guade must have found cheaper accommodations. But a European woman answered with a simple “Hello.”
“Is Professor Guade there?” Moran asked. Could Guade have somebody in Tokyo, a liaison? The idea seemed incongruent to Moran. What would they do together? Crank microfilm readers?
“Is this Moran sensei?” the woman’s voice gave a strange mockery to the Japanese addition of teacher or learned one to Moran’s name.
“Yes.”
“Well, Graham isn’t here, but I’m supposed to tell you that he’s gone off to Shikoku with Liv Wells for four or five days. They’re taking a ship on the Inland Sea and going to some famous park in Shikoku.”
“Ritsurin?” Moran said.
“Yes, I believe that’s it.”
“Did Professor Guade leave any instructions for me?”
“Instructions?”
“Directives, assignments, things he wanted done?” Moran slowed down his speech; it seemed the woman was not a native speaker.
“No. Graham said he was having trouble communicating with the hotel clerk. He was in a rush. I think they took the 7:00 p.m. shinkansen. So he called me.”
“I see,” Moran said.
“I do translation for him, for his research—every time he comes to Tokyo.”
Every time, Moran thought.
“But he didn’t leave any instructions. Maybe he’ll call you from Kobe, although he’s on a tight schedule. They wanted to catch the last ferry tonight.”
“I see. Well, okay, then. I guess I’ll talk to him when I talk to him. I go back to Osaka tomorrow.”
“I’m sure he’ll get in touch. Is there anything else, in case I talk to him before you do?”
Moran debated a while, then decided it was providential she turned up as a shield as well as deliverer of bad news. “You might mention to him, if you do talk to him, that there’s been an accident with the envelope he gave me. It doesn’t seem to have anything but blank sheets in it. So I really can’t evaluate blank sheets.”
“An accident?”
“Well, my poor choice of word. Maybe not an accident, maybe a theft or just a mistake or something. He might have given me the wrong envelope. He’ll know what I’m talking about.”
“And I should not tell him there’s been an accident?”
“Yes. Just tell him I can’t evaluate the information because I don’t have it. The envelope had only blank pages torn out from a notebook. Nothing was written on the pages. Nothing.”
“Okay, I’ll tell him, if that’s what you want.”
“Yes, thank you. I’m sorry to bother you so late.”
“No bother. I never go to bed before two or three in the morning.”
“Well, goodbye. Thanks again.”
“Don’t mention it. I’m glad to be Graham’s messenger, especially to such a distinguished sounding voice.”
Hmmn, Moran smiled, wondered, then thought better of it. “Well, goodbye,” he said.
With any luck she would break the news to Guade, who might then be so angered as never to contact Moran again—a prospect entirely appealing to him. The neatest way out.
Moran watched the show “11 p.m.” sometimes referred to as “The Men’s Hour.” On good nights the pornography was vivid and startling, but now he had to make do watching a leggy young woman who stripped to a G string and writhed on a black Naugahyde couch. The couch was covered with some kind of oil—Moran hoped it was Baby oil—and soon enough the model was oiled and glistening in the splendid definition of Japanese television. A panel of overweight Japanese men drank glasses of Suntory whisky and made low comments and guffaws concerning her performance. Even though he had put two 100 yen coins into the T.V. Moran turned it off at 11:45. He chained the door shut and lay back on the soft bed. He conjured pairs in his mind before dropping off to sleep: Guade and Wells, Atcheson and the Pacific Ocean; Moran and the expensive masseuse. He wondered if he should try the socks on. The thought pleased him. Without turning on the light he fumbled around for the envelope in his bag, pulled out the interior envelope and removed the socks. They were way too small—doubtless her own?
In the morning he managed to catch the 9:12 hikari shinkansen, the fastest bullet train back to Osaka. He sat on the right and watched for Mt. Fuji. In the five trips to Tokyo he had always seen the peak and that was considered good luck, but although he strained all the way to Nagoya, this time the heavy, grey atmosphere was too thick
He took the Midosuji line from Shin Osaka station to Senri Chuo, then caught a cab to his apartment in Yamada. Violating his own rules, he actually looked through his lectures on the Cold War to be given Monday and Tuesday at the university. He was more than prepared since most of his students did not understand what he was saying. He stood before them speaking sounds, and after a while he joined them in wondering what he was saying, wondering if they understood even a preposition he muttered. He decided the best historians merely babble and you listen only as they did when foraging the past, for what you already knew. He would have to try that sentiment on the historical methods seminar, if he ever returned to the U.S. He had been long enough in Japan for everywhere else to stop existing. He stopped his subscription to the English language newspaper. He self-sealed the envelope of Japan. The green mountains perpetually available through train and bus windows were more than enough to look at, or on the other side glimpses of the dark green sea. For diversion there was the endless array of faces framed in equal mounds of black hair. The people cascade never stopped—so profuse that after a while you didn’t need, didn’t want, anyone to share it with.
4.
On Monday and Tuesday mornings he walked to Senri Chuo, caught the 8:40 bus to the university and delivered as slowly as he possibly could his treasured perceptions of the U.S. and the Soviet Union from 1945 to 1954. There never were any questions. The classroom was narrow, but long, easily housing his sixty-five students from the Faculties of Technology and Pharmacology. He stood up front by a laboratory demonstration table and occasionally held up a printed summary of his remarks, pointing to key portions, crucial phrases. Before, and afterwards, Moran sat in the smelly, dank common room, drank luke-warm green tea and tried to make linguistic jokes with some of his Japanese colleagues. He wondered if their English