I graduated from university and moved to this country for graduate school. I grew to love the way of life here and decided to stay and make a living. My parents didn’t particularly oppose the idea. “You’ve been an odd one since you were a child,” my mother had said. “If you feel you fit in better over there, then go for it.” As I grew older, my father stopped interfering in my affairs almost entirely. He only gave me one piece of advice: “Just make sure you don’t get caught by the wrong kind of woman.”
I believed I had been quite cautious. Before leaving for my studies, I had read Mori Ogai’s The Dancing Girl. I told myself I must never be so reckless as to engage in a fleeting romance, only to have the woman follow me back to my homeland, forcing me into the miserable position of having to persuade her to leave or settle on a separation.
I thought I was safe, but during my student days, I failed miserably with a fellow international student named Natasha.
Natasha was the woman I was with before I met Mary.
As for how exactly I failed with Natasha…
I remember telling her once, “No matter where you are on Earth—the front side or the back—we are all breathing the same air. I find it mysterious. When I first traveled abroad, as I stepped off the plane, I was terrified that I might not be able to breathe and would simply die.”
“I imagine the plane touching down and me descending the stairs, only to find that I, like a goldfish plucked from its bowl, was the only one unable to breathe. I always felt this anxiety. Yet, since air circulates and diffuses across the globe, the composition of the atmosphere shouldn’t vary from one country or continent to another.”
At the time, Natasha’s eyes sparkled. “I’ve vaguely felt the same thing,” she said. “But I could never put it into words.”
We lived in one of the oldest port towns on the East Coast, a city with a history that spanned nearly the entire length of this country’s relatively short existence.
I lived in a district where rows of brick apartments stood shoulder to shoulder, several subway stops away from the city center. Trash littered the streets, and there was no one to clean it. People who had lost their minds to alcohol or drugs wandered the sidewalks or crouched in the gutters. They often spoke to me cheerfully. They weren’t stupid; they could tell at a glance that I was a student, and more specifically, which country I had come from.
They were truly gone in the head. The things they said were extraordinary—completely insane. And yet, they weren’t “bad” people. They were filthy, but they didn’t smell. Surprisingly, the neighborhood wasn’t particularly dangerous. This was likely because it was relatively suburban and a student quarter, with universities scattered throughout. Even the vagrants here tended to be intellectuals. Of course, the truly dangerous people existed, but the seasoned predators—the professional scammers and criminals whose livelihoods depended on it—stayed in the downtown areas where wealthy, naive tourists wandered, or in the slums they called home. They didn’t bother venturing out to a place like this.
One had to sharpen a certain wild instinct to survive here: which neighborhoods were dangerous and which were safe; which streets were fine to walk and which were absolute no-go zones; which seat was safe to sit in and which was a death trap.
No matter how many travel guides you read, these are things you can only learn through experience.
Near my apartment, there was a convenient, compact drugstore that sold everything from sundries to food. Conveniently, there was a park right in front of the store, and beyond that park flowed a wide, slow river that bisected the port town.
The university I attended lay on the opposite bank, across a long bridge.
International students must be frugal with their private lives, as they have to spend their limited funds exploring a vast, unknown world. Going to bars, flirting with girls, or inviting someone for movies or drives costs money. In that sense, Natasha and I were a perfect match. To put it bluntly, she was a convenient and affordable woman.
We hit it off as if we were childhood friends. That part isn’t a lie. We often spent our time in the park along the river by the university, sharing a bottle of vodka. Our snacks were popcorn or Spam from the drugstore. Despite being in a port town, we could rarely afford luxuries like lobster or king crab. The most we could manage was ordering an extra cup of clam chowder at McDonald’s.
She was a poor student from a poor Eastern European country. She must have been on a scholarship or a government grant, but she was the quintessential “struggling student.” We met at the same university—I can’t remember if it was in a lecture hall or the library. It started with a few words over something trivial.
Her hair was a reddish-gold and her eyes were blue, but she wasn’t a “Nordic beauty” by any stretch of the imagination.
She was short, with a round face and curly hair. Her fingers were plump and short, like a Kewpie doll’s. I imagine that from the time she was born until she became a young woman, she had always been bundled up in clothes like a matryoshka doll. To be honest, I never once thought she was beautiful. I might not have even once thought that I “liked” or “loved” her.
Then why did I end up with her? It was her aggressiveness, her persistence, her singular focus. But since the same could be said for Mary, the problem clearly lay with me, not them. It was my weakness—or rather, my inability to resist. My indecisiveness meant that if someone kept pushing, I would eventually give in.
Furthermore, though I’m entirely unaware of why, it seems I am popular with a certain type of woman. If only I knew which type and under what circumstances. Whenever I try to woo a girl I actually like, I am invariably rejected. Therefore, if I want a girlfriend, I have no choice but to wait for someone to like me first. I have no right to choose my partner. I gave up on taking the initiative with women a long time ago.
Of course, I wouldn’t date someone I truly disliked. I observed her in my own way, found her acceptable, and accepted her. And once I had accepted her, I felt I had a responsibility toward her.
It was around November.
The university was shut down and we were ordered to stay home because there had been deaths from the influenza. I turned back from the bridge I usually crossed. The riverbank was already frozen, and shards of broken ice floated in the middle of the span.
I stopped by the usual park. The bench, bathed in sunlight, was dry and warm. A tire hung by a rope from a tree where squirrels lived, and children were using it as a swing, just as they always did.
After basking in the sun for a while, as expected, Natasha arrived. She was bundled up in layers of sweaters, as usual.
But her legs were long and slender, fitting perfectly into tight jeans, which was the only way one could tell she was a grown woman.
As usual, we procured a bottle of vodka with a cheerful name—”Viking Fjord”—from the drugstore. I snapped open the screw cap, popped the top of a bottle of Schweppes, and toasted “Na zdorovye” in her native tongue.
We took turns drinking the vodka and the Schweppes, mixing the soda in our mouths. She made funny faces to make me laugh, and I mimicked her to do the same, and we both nearly spat out our drinks, choking with laughter.
In the beginning, we had been polite, pouring the vodka into disposable plastic cups from the drugstore to mix it with soda. But eventually, Natasha started insisting we drink directly from the bottle and share it, claiming it was “for the environment.” The descendants of Vikings, it seems, prefer such barbaric manners.
She held the bottle of transparent liquid fuel in front of her face, and like a fortune-teller manipulating a crystal ball, she peered into my eyes and asked, “Do you think life needs brakes?”
“Of course it does. You can’t drive a car that has an accelerator but no brakes, can you?”
Natasha took a gulp of the gasoline intended for humans and hiccuped. “Do you think life needs guardrails?”
“Obviously. You’d die if you fell off a cliff.”
Wiping her mouth with her sleeve, Natasha asked, “Do you think Bob Dylan needed a Nobel Prize?”
“Who knows?”
When we were children, there had been a great fuss over the folk singer Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Certain people, the “Harukists,” had made a tremendous racket about it. But to us, as youths, it didn’t matter.
“You are pressing the accelerator and the brake at the same time,” she said.
“The car will break.”
“Exactly. Hey, why not take your foot off the brake, floor the accelerator, and see what’s visible only after you’ve smashed through the guardrails?”
I felt a shiver, wondering if she was about to rub her nose against my stubbled cheek.
“But the moment I see what was hidden, not only the car, but my skull might be crushed as well.”
It was as if she were prophesying Mary. Of course, Natasha couldn’t have known about Mary, and at that time, my relationship with Mary hadn’t even begun.
In short, though it hardly needs explaining, she was simply telling me, “Take a chance and date me.” What on earth could possibly be beyond the guardrail?
“Natasha, you should go home. It’s late.”
She didn’t live alone; she was staying with a host family. She lived under one roof with the landlords and host sisters.
She had to take several trains from the far suburbs to get to the university, and she always complained that it was a waste of time.
Indeed, at our university, both undergraduates and graduates were required to live in dormitories for their first year.
In the second year, I was approached by a fellow student and started room-sharing with about five others. But one by one, they found girlfriends, moved out to cohabitate, and left. Since splitting the rent of a large house among fewer people became expensive, those of us remaining eventually disbanded and rented the smallest, cheapest rooms we could find to live alone.
Natasha had already cycled through several host families. I didn’t know if the problem was her or if she was simply unlucky. Perhaps the agents were bad, or she haggled too much over the rent, or perhaps she lacked social skills. No matter how many hosts she changed, she could never find peace in a home-stay. She would say that there was a fundamental problem with the host-family system—that it was impossible for her to “get along with the host sisters” as she was told.
When I suggested she simply stop doing home-stays, since she clearly wasn’t suited for staying in a stranger’s house, she would stubbornly insist that living alone as a woman was too dangerous, and room-sharing with other women was even worse.
She would pout her lips and puff out her cheeks in protest. She was protesting to the wrong person. I had no power to change the world. No one’s life goes exactly as they wish. Everyone should know that.
“I don’t want to go home.”
Here it comes. It’s a trap.
I had noticed long ago.
“Oh. Suit yourself.”
With her slender, plump fingers, she picked up the empty bottle of Viking Fjord—stained with lipstick—and twirled it in front of my eyes. On her middle finger was a ring with a decoration resembling a four-leaf clover. She loved silver. That ring was her favorite, handmade by Natasha herself from silver clay and silver wire.
“Your place is nearby, right? Where is it?”
“I’m not telling you.”
“Why not?”
“Because if I tell you, you’ll come over.”
“Is something bad going to happen if I do?”
“Of course it is.”
“What is it? You’re so stingy. You could at least let me stay for one night.”
“You idiot. It wouldn’t end with one night.”
“Why not?”
“Because we’re a young man and a young woman.”
She let out a small, mocking huff.
“You’re the one who got me drunk. Take responsibility.”
“That’s a matter of personal responsibility. Don’t blame me.”
“Are you really going to leave me, drunk, on a bench under this freezing sky? What if I freeze to death? Are you going to leave me as prey for the vagrants?”
I couldn’t tell if she was acting or serious.
“Your host family will be worried.”
“It’s fine. It happens all the time.”
“All the time?”
“The landlords tell me to get out every single day.”
I suddenly grew anxious. Knowing her, she might actually sleep rough. Or perhaps she intended to stay with some strange man I didn’t know about.
Unfortunately, my apartment was very close to that riverside park in front of the drugstore.
And I, for my part, wanted to go home and sleep in a warm bed.
When I started walking, she followed behind me.
None of the apartments around here had elevators. You had to take the stairs. Most buildings were only five or six stories high—probably because anything higher would be too exhausting to climb. Thus, they all looked the same: rows of aged, brown brick buildings.
In the end, she followed me right to the door of my room.
I resigned myself to the situation and let her stay the night. As for what happened after that, I don’t need to be tedious; you can imagine.
She was a sufficiently lovely young woman. Yet for some reason, she always sought me out.
I had known her for about six months by the time she started following me. It was certain that she liked me, but I didn’t know if her affection was singular. I suspected that Natasha was simply a promiscuous woman who moved from one man to another. I figured I was just one of her “keep” men, and today she had simply happened to roll into my house. I decided to believe that.
I don’t know why I tried to convince myself of that.
But she had shifted between host families, after all. So, it was only logical to assume she wouldn’t stay in my house for long.
My observations and deductions were entirely wrong. Or perhaps I was right, but she changed over time. Truth is a function of time; it changes along the temporal axis. As long as time exists in this world, everything changes. This is especially true for relationships between men and women.
The next morning, the two of us held hands like lovers and crossed the bridge toward the university on the opposite bank.
We kissed on the grassy plaza in front of the student union, under the lonely branches of leafless plane trees. For the first time since coming to this foreign university, I felt that I had become one of the students here, melting into the campus landscape, a student who normally had a girlfriend.
At first, we were shy and shared a light kiss. But it felt too fleeting, so we shared another, more intense one. She looked up at me and let out a little snort. I suddenly found her incredibly dear and kissed her a third time. I became terribly embarrassed that I had kissed her three times in public, while she just laughed. I tried to force myself to accept that in this country, couples kissing in public was normal; I had to get used to the customs of this land and learn to behave more naturally.
We waved goodbye and headed to our respective classes. Since I heard nothing from Natasha after that, I thought the day’s events were just a whim. I was wrong. Suddenly, she launched a bold “Blitzkrieg,” reminiscent of Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland. Over the weekend, she sent her belongings to my house and moved in. General Winter was on her side. That night, a cold wave hit this town at 42 degrees North; heavy snow piled up, making the roads impassable for cars. We spent
Christmas Eve together, and by the time the New Year arrived, she had become an immovable fixture in my home.
Living together was reasonably enjoyable. We woke up together and ate breakfast together. It was a life like that of a real married couple. There was no sense of incongruity.
She usually ate croissants. She drank tea, adding honey on some days, maple syrup on others, or sometimes a molasses-like syrup made from dates. I always had a piece of French bread. I drank coffee with soy milk.
We walked across the bridge arm-in-arm, had lunch at the campus cafeteria, met again at the student union after class, and had dinner at the cafeteria before heading home. She patiently listened to my poor English. I was decent at reading and writing, but my listening and speaking were terrible. However, by living and talking with Natasha every day, my speaking ability improved at a tremendous pace, until it was nearly on par with hers. Well, I think it did.
Language learning is simply like that. No matter how much you study, you might not acquire it; but by cohabiting with a girl, you learn it in an instant. Language and conversation are not academic subjects. They are a way of life.
I tried not to think about marriage. Because looking at the couples around us, everyone seemed to be in a state of flux—getting together, breaking up, fighting, making up. They were all so busy that they didn’t seem to think about the future at all. It seemed foolish for me alone to agonize over whether I should marry her or take responsibility for her. In fact, she never brought up the future, nor did I. Time simply slipped away.
But occasionally, I fell into the illusion that I would spend the rest of my life with this girl. And when that happened, I would become overwhelmed with anxiety, worrying about what I would do.
The alarm would ring, and while still half-asleep, I would light the gas stove. As the window glass began to fog white in the darkness, she would peel her plump body away from mine and get out of bed, walking naked to the stove to boil water.
Then, she would open a jar of pickles that smelled sour and start slicing them on the cutting board. The aroma of the tea she brewed, the sweet scent of date syrup, and the scent of her hair would overlap. As the morning sun gradually filtered into a room filled with that atmosphere, we felt like newlyweds who had held a ceremony in some church and moved to this town. But then, as we fully woke up, we were dragged back to reality. We had to think about our university credits, and at the same time, our futures.
She was an undergraduate, and I was a master’s student. I finished my degree quickly and, with a university recommendation, decided to take a job at a company on the West Coast. But she was still in her third year. She might have gone on to graduate school. I had no choice but to break up with Natasha.
She was a literary girl with aspirations of becoming a journalist. I asked her once, “Do you read Stanisław Lem?”
She looked at me blankly. “Who is that?”
“He’s a writer from your country.”
“I don’t know him.” Hmm. She wasn’t familiar with sci-fi writers. “Well, do you read Tolstoy or Dostoevsky?”
“I don’t read that stuff. It’s too long. Everyone reads the first three pages and gives up.”
“Really? Is that how it is?”
“One should make an effort to organize the story more efficiently if they have something to say and want people to read it. They should write the main points as compactly as possible so as not to waste the reader’s time.”
“Yes. I strongly agree with that view.”
“Your country’s classical literature is the same, right? Long and boring. Like the Genji.”
“That’s too old. Tolstoy is early modern.”
“Then do you read Chikamatsu, or Santo, or Takizawa? In the original?”
“Santo” apparently referred to Santo Kyoden.
“No, no. Nobody reads those.”
“It’s the same thing.”
“Then, how about Tarkovsky?”
“Now we’re talking movies. I was made to watch him at school. It was excruciatingly boring.”
“Which film?”
“The teacher raves about it, saying Tarkovsky’s best work is this one, that the others aren’t even worth seeing, that you must see this first. It’s a film called Andrei Rublev. It’s an incredibly dull story about a hot-air balloon crashing in the Russian countryside, followed by a long, tedious tale about medieval Russia finally escaping the Mongol yoke.”
“True. For someone who loves Russia, it might be interesting, but for someone on the outside who knows nothing of Russian life, it might be the height of boredom.” In fact, I suspect that Russian life itself is profoundly boring to people like us. I vaguely felt that.
Of course, for me, Tarkovsky meant Solaris, or in some cases, My Village After the War, but I didn’t think I could find any common ground with her there. I regretted bringing up the subject. In truth, I had no way of imagining what kind of novels or movies an Eastern European literary girl read or watched. In a sense, I had absolutely no interest in it. In other words, in terms of literary taste, there was almost zero overlap between us.
Conversely, Natasha asked me, “Why did you come to this country to study and decide to become an engineer?”
“Am I not allowed to be an engineer?”
“No, not at all.”
At that moment, I felt a subtle resistance to the way she said “be an engineer.” I didn’t think she could possibly understand why someone of a scientific background would go through the trouble of studying abroad just to become an engineer.
“Don’t you want to become a doctor?”
“No. If there were a piece of research that only I could do, and if the problem were so critical that it couldn’t be solved unless I entered a PhD program, I might have been forced to. But no such convenient research existed.” She laughed. “On the contrary, there was work I wanted to try myself. I want to use my talents to do work that I can be satisfied with. Not work that satisfies someone else, but work that I am satisfied with, and then make it viable as a
business.”
“So, you want a job like a craftsman,” she concluded.
“In my country, it seemed to me that once you belong to an organization, you can no longer do the work you want to do.
That’s why I came to this country. If this country is the same as the one I grew up in—if I work for a company and still find I can’t do what I want—then I’ll go back home. What about you?”
“Me?”
“What will you do? After you graduate, will you go back to your country? Or will you work here?”
“Well…” She looked blank. “If you go back, maybe I’ll go back too.”
Perhaps she wanted me to persuade her to stay. Perhaps I should have said, “Let’s stay in this country together,” or “Come to my country with me.” But for some reason, I felt the temptation to strike back. “And why did someone like you decide to come to this country to become a journalist?”
She looked blank again. I changed the question. “Because you longed for the freedom of the West?”
“What era are you talking about? Nowadays, no one cares about ‘West’ or ‘East’.”
“Hmm,” I replied, wanting to tease her further. “Journalism is just a bunch of scammers fabricating non-existent suspicions to incite anxiety and fear in people. I can’t imagine why someone would want that job.”
“Stoking populism to make a living. Yes, that is the reality of journalism.” Surprisingly, she didn’t get angry. “I simply wanted a job where I could write. If I write in my mother tongue, the audience is limited. If I write in English, the whole world can read it. A book in my native language might sell a hundred copies, but the same content in English might sell a hundred thousand. That’s why I came to this country. To make a living by writing.”
“Don’t you want to be a language teacher in some rural town?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Hmm. Then, would you rather be a writer than a journalist?”
“A writer? What is a writer? Someone who earns money by writing on behalf of people who have money but no talent?”
“Yeah. You could call it that.”
“That means even if your own thoughts are diametrically opposed to the client’s, you have to write a piece that fits their perspective and makes them satisfied, and then sell that piece. I could never do that.”
“So, journalism it is?”
“Yes. By process of elimination, that’s where I end up. But obviously, only a handful of people can make a living solely on their reporting or writing skills. Most can’t. But once you’ve acquired the skill, it’s not easy to quit. That’s why it’s so easy to succumb to the temptation of evil.”
“Fall to the dark side?”
“In otaku terms, perhaps. That’s why they seek salvation. Salvation? It’s an ideology, a philosophy. A narcotic necessary to deceive oneself, to forgive oneself, and to avoid being tormented by one’s own conscience. But once you become dependent on that drug, you can never reclaim your true self.”
“I see. And knowing that, you still want to be a journalist?”
“Yes. Well, while I’m young, I might as well test my talents.”
Natasha was fascinated by the rice cooker I had brought from Japan. She told me that they eat rice in her country too, but since they cook it in salt water, it tastes salty. As a parting gift, I gave her the rice cooker. She was delighted and said she would take it back to her hometown after graduation.
Once again, I wondered for a moment if I should say something to keep her here, but I reminded myself that I had no such right.
In return for the rice cooker, she told me she would give me a large silver coin.
It was a commemorative coin minted in her home country.
Her country had originally been part of the East, but since it had a large Christian population, it had been targeted by the Marxists who viewed religion as opium.
Since the first Pope from terms of that country’s history had been elected, the faithful were overjoyed, and coins featuring the Pope’s profile and name were issued. I don’t remember if the denomination was 1,000 zloty or 100,000 zloty.
I either lost it over time or tucked it away somewhere; I don’t remember.
When she came to study in America, her parents, who were devout Christians, had given her the commemorative coin. I felt I couldn’t accept such a precious silver coin, but since she insisted it be a memento of our meeting, I took it.
I flew back and forth between the West Coast and the East Coast to prepare for my new job and move. I asked Natasha to move out by the date the apartment lease ended. When I visited the apartment one last time, it was already a hollow shell. It had been cleaned meticulously. I felt a sharp pinch in my chest. I searched every corner of the room, but there was no trace of her. I thought surely she must have left something—perhaps that silver ring she always wore—somewhere discreetly. I thought she wanted me to find it and reminisce. I thought she was hoping I would travel a great distance to
return the ring to her.
But there was nothing. Not even the rice cooker.
I assume she started living alone somewhere, but I don’t know for sure.
Looking back, we had lived together for barely half a year. Now, it is a short, pleasant, and nostalgic memory of my student days. I don’t believe I abandoned her. I often think I’d like to sit on that bench in front of the drugstore and talk with her again.
Thinking about it now, the reason I decided not to return home after graduate school, to work in this country and seek permanent residency, might be because I had a “girlfriend” like Natasha. I don’t think I had the resolve or courage to live alone in a foreign land until the day I died, as a solitary man incapable of even making a single lover. She gave me confidence. Thanks to her, I was able to become a full-fledged member of society in this country. I am certainly grateful
to her. I don’t know if you would call that romantic love, though.