The Japanese Lover(51)
The girl somehow managed to get from Chisinau to Dallas all on her own. She had only traveled once before, when she went with her grandmother to visit Costea in the hospital in the nearest city, when he had his gallbladder removed. She had never seen an airplane close up, only in the sky, and knew no English apart from the latest pop songs, which she had learned by heart without understanding their meaning. The airline put a plastic envelope around her neck with her name, passport, and ticket in it. Irina had nothing to eat or drink on the eleven-hour flight, because she didn’t know that the food on board was free, and the air hostess neglected to tell her, or in the four hours she was stranded and penniless at Dallas airport. The gateway to the American dream was that enormous, confusing place. When her mother and stepfather finally arrived, they said they had gotten the flight’s arrival time wrong. Irina did not recognize them, but they saw a very blond little girl sitting on a bench with a cardboard box at her feet and were able to identify her from a photograph they had. All Irina could remember from that first meeting was that they both stank of alcohol; that sour smell was very familiar to her, as her grandparents and the other villagers often used to drown their sorrows in home-brewed wine.
Radmila and her husband, Jim Robyns, drove the new arrival to their home. To Irina this seemed the height of luxury, even though it was an ordinary-looking clapboard house in a working-class neighborhood in the south of the city, and was very run-down. Her mother had made an attempt to decorate one of the two bedrooms with heart-shaped cushions and a teddy bear with the string of a pink balloon tied to one of its paws. She advised Irina to sit in front of the television for as many hours as she could face: that was the best way to learn English, as she herself had done. In forty-eight hours Radmila had enrolled her in a public school where the students were mostly black or Hispanic, two races the girl had never seen before. It took Irina a month to learn a few phrases in English, but she had a good ear and could soon follow her lessons. Within a year she could speak English without any trace of an accent.
Robyns was an electrician. He belonged to a union, charged the maximum hourly rate, and was protected against accidents, but didn’t always have work. Contracts were awarded according to a list of union members, the first job going to the first on the list, and so on. When one of them finished a contract, he was put at the end of the list, and sometimes had to wait months before being called again, unless he was well connected with any of the union bosses. Radmila worked in the children’s clothing section of a department store; it took her an hour and a quarter to get there by bus, and the same to come home. When Robyns had work, they hardly ever saw him, because he made the most of it and worked all hours to the point of exhaustion; he was paid double or triple for overtime. During these periods he did not drink or take drugs, because any slip could mean he was electrocuted, but in the lengthy periods he was laid off he got wasted with alcohol and used so many drugs it was amazing he could still stand.
“My Jim is as strong as an ox,” Radmila boasted, “nothing can knock him out.” She joined him on his sprees as far as possible, but her body could not take as much as his, and she soon collapsed.
From Irina’s very first days in America, her stepfather made her understand what he called his rules. Her mother knew nothing about it, or pretended not to, until two years later, when Wilkins knocked on her door and showed her his FBI badge.
SECRETS
After repeated pleas from Irina and much hesitation on her part, Alma agreed to become the leader of the Letting Go Group. This idea had occurred to Irina when she realized how anxious those Lark House residents who clung to their possessions were compared to those who had less. She had seen Alma get rid of so much she was even afraid she might have to lend her a toothbrush, which was why she thought that Alma would be ideal to help guide the group. The first meeting was due to take place in the library. Five people had signed up, among them Lenny, and they had all arrived punctually, but there was no sign of Alma. They waited for a quarter of an hour before Irina went to call her. She found the apartment empty, exept for a note saying she would be away for a few days and asking her to look after Neko. The cat had been ill and couldn’t be left on its own. Irina was forbidden as a tenant from having animals, so she had to smuggle him into her room in a shopping bag.
That night Seth called on her cell phone to ask after his grandmother. He had passed by to see her at suppertime but was unable to find her, and was worried because he thought Alma had not completely recovered from the incident at the cinema. Irina told him Alma had vanished on another of her trysts, having completely forgotten about her prior commitment, and as a result she herself had been left embarrassed at the group meeting. Seth had met with a client in the Port of Oakland, and since he was close to Berkeley he invited Irina to go and eat sushi, which seemed to him the most appropriate cuisine while they discussed the Japanese lover. Irina was in bed with Neko, playing her favorite video game, The Elder Scrolls V, but got dressed and went out to meet him. The restaurant was an oasis of oriental peace, with light wood walls and booths separated by rice-paper partitions, lit by red lanterns whose warm glow induced a great sense of calm.
“Where do you think Alma goes when she disappears?” Seth asked after they ordered.
Irina filled his small ceramic bowl with sake. Alma had told her that in Japan the correct thing to do was to serve the other person first and then wait for someone to serve you.