LITMIR.BIZ

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main rail line had been cut in half. Bewildered rail employees ran in and out of the station. One stopped to apologize to the reporter that bullet train service was canceled until further notice.

      “Then the scene jumped to a reporter in the local seismic center, announcing the quake was a seven, the highest on the Japanese seismic scale. The reporter asked if there would be aftershocks. Undoubtedly, said the seismologist, as the camera began to shake and the reporter and scientist ducked for cover. The death estimate rose into the thousands by nightfall. The fires burned in the darkened city in red, crusty patches like smoldering flesh.”

      I said, “The quake didn’t make me want to become a doctor, at least I don’t think so, but I remember the reports of how people died both distressed and fascinated me. That was when I heard about crush syndrome for the first time.” I explained how the muscles build up toxins when they are under the stress of being crushed. When the weight is lifted off them suddenly, the toxins flood the body, attacking organs and forcing the heart into severe arrhythmia. “Just when you think you’re saved, you die in excruciating pain.”

      That brought our little party to a standstill.

      When we recovered, we ordered another beer and a bowl of rice crackers. The three boat builders argued about what to fix next. Occasionally they would glance at us, speaking in lowered voices as if we were going to steal their secrets of engines, net repair, or bilge pumping.

      While we ate and drank, Aki told me about the slow speed of research and development of adequate prediction farther from the Great Hanshin Earthquake. He believed there had to be a better approach than the plodding academic work of his colleagues. So even as a young researcher he pressed his case through proposals and meetings and budgets and other bureaucratic machinations. Then the 2011 Great Eastern Earthquake and Tsunami struck the afternoon of March 11. He redoubled his efforts and he finally received approval. He wasn’t sure if he convinced management that the benefits outweighed the costs, or if they simply tired of him and his unrelenting requests. They gave him a tight deadline and a slim budget to accomplish his work, but it was better than nothing.

      The beers and the trip had exhausted me. I sat up straight, took in a deep breath, and asked Aki, “Two years is a long time to be away from home. How did your wife take the news?”

      He tensed, frozen in thought. Then he told me.

      Convincing Mitsuko of the value of spending so much time away from her and Hajime was difficult. Life would be better in the long run, he told her. At first she would not listen to his justifications of the importance of the work, of how it would save lives. She simply said, “Please, I can’t talk about this right now.”

      A week went by. Late one night, over a late dinner and a bottle of wine, she said, “It’s important to you, isn’t it?”

      “Yes, but I understand why you don’t want me to do this.”

      “Would you miss us?”

      “A lot.”

      “Then how could you go? I, we, don’t make you happy?”

      “You do make me happy. This is something different than happiness. But I can’t explain what it is.”

      Mitsuko was quiet for a minute or two, then said, “Someday, I suppose I’ll understand.”

      Aki said, “I hope so. I hope I’ll understand it enough to explain it to you.”

      “That would be nice. But you will have to explain it to Hajime right now.”

      He knew it would be very difficult. But the next day Hajime came home crying after school. They asked him what was wrong and he said his teacher was lying. The teacher told the class there’s a giant catfish named Namazu, who lives in the mud deep in the earth. The catfish likes to play pranks and whenever he moves around too much, he causes an earthquake. Only Kashima, the god who protects Japan from earthquakes, can hold him down. Kashima uses a rock with magical powers over the catfish, but every so often, he relaxes and the catfish gets loose. That’s when we have earthquakes.

      Hajime told his teacher that he was wrong. His father was a seismologist who told him that earthquakes come from movements in the earth’s crust and fault lines. The teacher had planned a week’s worth of lessons around the catfish myth. A play, art lessons, reading and writing exercises. Hajime would have none of it, so the teacher ordered him to sit in the corner.

      Aki tried to explain “myth,” but Hajime was in the black-and-white stage. Either it’s the truth or it isn’t. Either something is good or it’s bad. But Aki convinced him to play along with the teacher.

      When Aki told him that he had to leave for a while, to find out more about earthquakes, Hajime said, “Good. You will show the teacher he is wrong.”

      We drank another beer or two. I told Aki I was going to call it a night. He said he would have one more.

      “By the way, where are you staying?” I asked him. “Isn’t the inn the only place on the island?”

      “I stayed there for a while, but Mrs. Takahashi was always snooping through my things. And there are several abandoned homes to use.”

      “Is that where Mari stays, in one of the abandoned homes?”

      “She’s not staying at the inn, if that’s what you mean.”

      “Just curious.” I finished my beer, thanked him for introducing me to Yoshi’s. The bar owner thanked me profusely on my way out.

      While walking on the rough path back to the inn, I realized I had had more to drink than I would have thought. I wished I had a flashlight and someone to lean on. Then I heard what sounded like a voice. I stopped and listened but heard nothing more except the foliage rustling and old homes creaking in the steady breeze. Yet, I couldn’t move and I stood frozen to the spot, breathing shallowly. In my catatonic state, I could feel the island pulsing, breathing, crying a low moan as if it were dying.

      5

      Shortly before sunrise, a loud crack woke me up and a jolt threw me half off the futon. I’d been in a few earthquakes, of course, but never one as intense as if it were directly under me. The bending and rolling made the timber-framed inn creak and groan like a wooden ship caught in a typhoon, not that I’d been in a wooden ship in a typhoon. I was sure the inn was going to collapse and crush me.

      Then the movement stopped suddenly and completely.

      I got up and the room spun. It could have been an aftershock or a hangover. Funny, I thought weirdly, a better word for hangover would be aftershock. The body goes in a kind of shock from too much alcohol.

      When the spinning slowed, I went down to the ground floor. In the middle of the main room, the landlady smiled excitedly. “Big one,” she said and patted a wooden pole that served as a main column holding up the inn. She muttered something about her grandfather, and righted the lamps and picked up books and other items tossed onto the floor. The power flickered then went off.

      After I helped her, I went outside and looked for damaged buildings or smoke. The danger from an earthquake was often from the fires that followed: split gas lines, toppled water heaters, cigarettes tossed aside when a quake hits. After the Great Hanshin Earthquake, many of the fires were started when the electric power was restored. Sparks from downed power lines or toppled home appliances ignited escaping natural gas or kerosene. The wooden structures on the island would catch on fire just as quickly. I didn’t see any fires or smoke in the immediate area, so I headed to the clinic to see if there were any injured people.

      No one was in the clinic, but files and equipment had spilled onto the floor. I left them where they were and went back out. After I’d walked past a few buildings with no apparent damage, I came to a house that had collapsed, its heavy, tiled roof intact on the walls tipped onto their sides. It was the house I’d been in yesterday with Mari and Mrs. Nagano.

      I

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