The lagoon at Marendo

leaning across the aisle and putting her hand on his shoulder, keeping her voice low so Marliene sleeps on Vlad. waiting until he moves before she says any more The panel says Marendo, and we are close.

keeping her hand where it is for a second longer, then drawing it back We are. sitting up and looking past him at the window I slept the whole way. I do not remember the train stopping once, and it must have stopped somewhere.

taking that in, her eyes on the salt lakes going past So the stops depend on whether anyone is standing there. At home I would have slept through them anyway, if I had ever slept on a train.

listening to the whole of it with her head slightly turned toward the door They tell you about the cables. reaching down for her bag At home the voice asks you to mind the gap and says nothing about what is over your head.

stopping with the bag half lifted Then it is a real risk here. setting the bag on her knees At home the yellow line comes up every time, and the crowding sometimes, when the platform is full. The cables weren't a concern.

looking out at the poles going past the salt lakes I had not seen many poles until now. In Lindoma the cables all run under the street, and the only wire above my head is the one for the tram.

leaning in toward the screen, the crossing filling with people under the boards Nine in the evening there, near enough. sitting back She still gets it wrong in the other direction. Morning for her is the middle of the night here, seven hours behind, and she rings me at two because she has finished her breakfast and thought of something.

watching the crossing empty and fill again on his screen I told her the difference in the first month and she wrote it on a paper by the phone. Then I stopped correcting her. If I answer at two in the morning sounding awake, she believes I keep ordinary hours, and she puts the phone down happy.

leaning over the phone to see the platform and the green stripe on the cars That could work on her. She thinks in trains the way everybody there does. thinking it through She is in Nerima, so Shinjuku is the station she changes at when she comes into town, and she knows what the boards look like at that hour. If I say ring me when the Yamanote is on the board at nine, she will picture it and she will get it right.

taking the phone and holding it flat between them so they both see the concourse Nobody remembers the schedule. You learn four or five colours and which side the doors open on, and the rest is signs. handing it back Here I got lost in my first week because there was nothing to read. Lindoma has an old part, then the blocks, then the yards, and each one goes on for a long way with nothing above five floors.

following what he is describing, her hands still on her bag So you read the buildings. a pause I never learned to do that. Shinjuku has more than two hundred exits and I came out of the right one every time, because there is a number on every one of them and the number is on the sign above your head from the moment you leave the train.

the shape of that settling I looked those up when I was reading the transport register at home in the evenings. They were built together and named for a Bosnian singer, one station for the first name and one for the second, and the tunnel between them was part of the design from the start. turning to him A village of a few thousand with two stations and a tunnel joining them. Half the exits are shut and the whole thing is still larger than the station I used every day of my working life.

nodding Baraki-Nakayama. Two exits, one platform under the road, and the Tozai every few minutes. It is about the size of Beslic on its own, and Beslic is the smaller half of a station in a village nobody outside the region has heard of.

watching it through to the end without saying anything, then quietly A thousand people, and they built him a hall and a library.

turning the phone over once in her hand before she gives it back I would have thought the same in Japan. A station like that in a village of a thousand means somebody was owed something. Here it seems the plan simply said build it, and then they built it, and the man in the video has been walking through it for years.

listening to the whole of it with her bag already on her knees The driver would have said the station and nothing else. And they are calling it Christmas in August.

turning the phrase over The basic formula, so the rest of it is flavour. I have drunk beer a few times, all of them at company dinners, and I never once chose it. Somebody poured it and I held the glass until it was warm. looking toward the door I would try this one.

They do say the name twice. Marendo, Marendo. Yours sounds like a badly done JR announcement. The polite one never says get off. It says the doors on the right side will open.

a small sound close to a laugh Kudasai is four syllables you put at the end of everything, and after a while it stops meaning please and starts meaning I am still being careful with you. picking her bag up off her knees Use jizdu with me. I would rather be spoken to the way you speak to somebody who will laugh.

shaking her head JR Kyushu. It is its own company, the red one. JR West is Osaka and Hiroshima, and the two are next to each other on the map, so people outside Japan put them together. putting her bag on the seat Six companies came out of the split, seven with the freight one.

following that with interest Ten cars sounds like a wall of weight behind you. sitting on the arm of the seat The reference here is three, five on the busy runs. I took the metro in Lindoma once, the S, and the train was two cars and the platform was barely longer than the train.

marking the moment with one finger against her knee You said it two seconds after the wheels moved. The doors had barely finished. On the Tozai the name comes when the train is already at speed and the platform is gone, so nobody hears it standing on the platform behind you.

You have to stand on the floor to be let out. I would have been carried to the end of the line in my first week and I would have had no idea what I had done wrong.

taking that in You were riding it for no reason, with somebody, so the fear was small enough to sit next to. a pause Mine was never like that. I rode alone and the fear was about the doors closing on the wrong minute.

standing at the far door with her bag in front of her, watching the platform come up This is it.

coming down last and stopping beside them to look along the platform All of them for the one bus.

crossing the square at a quick pace with her bag held against her side Coming. reaching the door and taking the step up

taking the seat beside Marliene and setting her bag by her feet Thirty minutes to the end of the line. looking out as the driver closes the door This is the first time I have gone as far as the sea.

steadying herself as the bus pulls off the square A lagoon and not the open sea.

still turned toward the side the substation went past on There was a school next to it. finding it again with her eyes as the bus clears the corner Yellow frames on the windows, a yard with a net up.

watching two trams cross under the ramp while the bus holds at the island I read the rule when I registered. Nobody owns one, you book it from the pool for the trip and you leave it back at a stand.

following where he is pointing, at the pale block with the rounded corner A lake under the floor. watching it go past the window So they built the bath on top of it and cut a tunnel to reach the water. Nothing on the outside of that building says what is beneath it.

looking down the length of the boulevard at them They are the same ones as at home in Lindoma, four floors, the balconies on the long side, the drying frames out.

following the line of balconies as they pass For me it is Chiba. The danchi behind the station, the same four floors, the same frames on the balconies with the futons over them.

keeping her eyes on the blocks going past They were built to be forgotten and they are the thing I recognise fastest. a small movement of her shoulders My father worked nights and we had two rooms above a car park in one of those.

listening to that with her bag against her feet Mine was written down and paid too, every hour of it, and my mother was proud of the figure.

keeping her hands on her bag My country was rich and I was poor in it. Rent took a third before anything else, the fare took its part, and what stayed was for the flat and the food. I bought bread from the shelf by the door after nine at night because that is when the stickers go on, and I planned the day around getting to that shelf. Everything looks cheap because a lunch costs little and a hundred yen shop sells you every food you need. Then the flat is two rooms above a car park, the ceiling is low and it is sometimes cold in February. looking out at the blocks I was told for eight years that I was middle. I had a suit and a company name but no savings.

So the number moved a little and the shelf moved a lot. shifting her bag The hundred yen shops went to a hundred and ten with the tax, and the ones I used to go to started putting three hundred yen shelves in the middle of the floor when I left. When my mother tells me on the phone what onions cost now, I no longer have any feeling for the figure.

The people making those films are right that the postcard is wrong, and they replace it with a second postcard. turning to face them I lived it and my view was small. I knew my line, my section, my two rooms, and the shelf after nine, and I would have told you that was the country. Coming here opened it, because for the first time I could see what my own life had looked like from outside.

thinking about how to say it That my answer was the same every time. I am managing, work is busy, everything is fine. It was acceptable at home, but here I gave it several times at the cooperative and I could see it landing badly. They read it as shutting the door on them and ended up further outside than I ever was in Funabashi. So I started telling the truth in small amounts, slowly, to people who were nowhere near my closest. a short pause I still cover things but what I understand now is that a flat society gives you no way to cover them forever, because nobody is above you to be protected from it.

stopping two steps off the bus with her bag against her side, breathing it in Oh. turning her head along the whole length of the water

counting what she can see along the shore There are maybe a few tens of people on the whole of it. looking back at the kerb where the bus is turning And no car park behind us, so everyone here came on that bus.

following the two of them toward the boats Then he will remember you. quietly, adjusting her bag on her shoulder I have never been in a rowing boat. Tell me now what I am supposed to do with my hands, so I do not learn it in front of him.

stopping to look at it and something close to a laugh coming out of her Shinjuku. reading the front of it You have brought me to a beach at the end of a bus line and put me in front of the second most signed building on earth.

counting off what she has already passed There were arrows on the road two stops back, and the yellow boards at the kerb, and the panel at the bus door. And now the wall has the opening hours, the boat times, the tide, the rules for the beds, the warning about the cables, the number to call. shaking her head At home the crowding is the reason for all the signs. Here there are a few tens of people on the sand and the wall still tells you everything twice.

taking his hand and giving a small broken bow with it Akima. I am new here. straightening up Fourteen months in the Republic, in Lindoma. This is the first time I have left the city.

looking from the chart to the boats through the window I have never rowed. Not once, not even as a child.

her oar sinking for a moment I remember the rectangle. Blue, with the red band across the top and the map inside it, and the sound before the picture. starting the stroke again It came over the television and the phone at once, and after a while you knew what it was before you had read a word of it.

rowing steadily again They rehearse it frequently. That is why it sounds continuous. The alarm cuts whatever is on air, the announcer reads the region and the intensity, then the map comes up, then the cameras from the stations and the towers, and none of it stops until the shaking has stopped. The voice stays level the whole way through. The old rule was that a person shouting at you is a person frightening you, and a frightened person makes worse decisions.

a pause on the stroke After 2011 they were told the calm had made people take the tsunami lightly, so now, for a tsunami and only for a tsunami, the announcer drops the level voice and tells people to run, over and over, with the word on the screen in red.

taking her hands off the oar for a second to rest them Kinkyuu jishin sokuhou desu. Tsuyoi yure ni keikai shite kudasai. looking at Stoicvick That is the whole of it at home. The two tones, that sentence, the region on the screen, and then you wait. picking the stroke back up Here the voice read out the origin time, the depth, the magnitude, the step for the place I was standing in, the equivalent on four other scales, and every sub-region in the country, and the floor had still not moved.

steadying her oar At home a 3 is nothing. You look up, you see the light swing, you go back to what you were doing. I would have prepared myself for a 4. shaking her head slightly This morning the tone went and I was on the floor with my back against the bunk frame before I had read a word of the message, and what arrived was a small lift under us, twice.

shaking her head Mine is new. You are in the block on the diagonal from me and it is older than mine by thirty years or more. a pause You told me about the article on the panel buildings and the concrete from the sixties. If your balcony is cracked at two levels, then yours is in the part of the stock that has still not been done.

a small shake of her head Mine was modern, and the problem was space. Two rooms, everything folded away, nothing on the walls. looking at the water Here I have more of it, and what I live in is a decorated danchi with the same layout, on the same Marginal street as yours. The neighbours call ours the communist-era buildings and so do you.

thinking about the word for a second At home a block like mine is just a block, and nobody attaches a politics to the shape of it. a small shrug The whole of this coast sounds like Eastern Europe to me anyway, so the word arrives with everything else.

nodding as he says it I read what I could find before I came, in Tokyo. The embargo in 1949, the Directorate running everything in secret, the uranium found in the fifties because there was no oil, the whole country turned onto one programme and the population told nothing about it for sixteen years. looking at the shore Every part of that reads like Eastern Europe. We had an occupation and then a boom, and the state never disappeared from view the way yours did.

taking her phone out of the inside pocket of her bag Yes. She asked for them. standing the phone up and framing the dune line with the beds under the water in front of it

dropping into the seat with her bag on her knees and her hair still stuck to her neck It is in my clothes.