CDC Warns: Early School Start Times Could Negatively Affect Sleep-Deprived Students’ Health and Academic Performance - The AtlanticThe Cafeteria in the Evening and a Pool in the Rain - The New Yorker
Juju and I moved here on a foggy morning in early winter. There wasn’t that much to move—just an old wardrobe, a desk, and a few boxes. It was simple enough. Sitting on the enclosed porch, I watched the small truck rattle off into the mist. Juju sniffed around the house, checking the cinderblock wall and the glass panel in the door, as if to reassure himself about his new home. He made little grumbling noises as he worked, his head cocked to one side. The fog was rolling away in gentle waves. It was not the sort of suffocating fog that in fact, this fog seemed pure and almost transparent, like a cool, thin veil that you could reach out and touch. I stared at it for a long time, leaning against the boxes, until I felt as if I could see each milky droplet. Juju had grown tired of sniffing and was curled up at my feet. Feeling a chill on my back, I peeled away the tape on the box I had been leaning against, pulled out a sweater, and put it on. A bird flew straight into the fog and disappeared. My fiancé fell in love with the house first. “Doesn’t it seem a little old-fashioned?” I said, rubbing my finger over a faded storm shutter.
“Old, but good and sturdy,” he said, looking up at a thick pillar.
“The stove and the hot-water heater are ancient,” I said as I turned a knob on the oven. It made a dry, clicking sound. The tiles on the kitchen walls had been carefully scrubbed, but they were chipped in places and the cement underneath showed through in an elaborate geometric pattern.
“This is amazing,” he said to the woman from the real-estate office. “The stove is German, and practically an antique. It must be quite rare.”
“It is,” she said, nodding emphatically. “It was left behind by a German student who rented the place several years ago. It’s a genuine German stove.” She stressed the word “German.” “Then it should never break down,” he said and smiled at me. We inspected the bedroom, the bathroom, and the living room, checked the doors, looked for rust on the pipes, and counted the electrical outlets. It didn’t take long. All the rooms were small but cozy. As we came to the porch, he looked out at the yard through the glass doors. It was completely bare. No plants, no flower beds, nothing at all except an occasional patch of clover. “Let’s take it,” he said. “It would be perfect for Juju, too.”
“It would be good for Juju,” I agreed. The most important thing was that we’d found a place where we could live with Juju. Beyond that, there was very little we could do to prepare for our marriage, particularly since everyone we knew seemed to be against it. Whenever we told someone that we were considering the possibility, we’d get a sombre look and a long pause. “You should really give yourselves time to think this over,” we were invariably told. The reasons were familiar ones. He was divorced. He’d been trying to pass the bar exam for ten years. He had high blood pressure and suffered from migraines. The difference in our ages was excessive, and we were very poor. Juju yawned. He lay in the yard now, in an elegant sprawl, his black and brown spots vivid against a patch of clover. The fog was thinning, and there were rays of sunlight here and there. It occurred to me that I should be doing something. I could put up new curtains or paint the bathroom, or I could line the cl in fact, there were any number of improvements to be made to this old house. In three weeks, my fiancé and I would be married—a small ceremony, with only the two of us present—and then he would move here. In the meantime, it was up to me to get the house ready. But for now I just wanted to watch the fog. There was no need to hurry, and I was determined to take full advantage of these last three weeks of my single life.
The next day it rained. It was raining when I woke up, and it rained all day without a break. Fine, threadlike drops slid down the window one after another. The house across the way, the telephone poles, Juju’s kennel—everything was quietly soaking up water.
I made almost no progress with the boxes. The morning passed while I reread old letters and flipped through photo albums, and suddenly it was noon. I thought about making something to eat, but I didn’t have proper dishes or utensils in the kitchen. And it was too much trouble to go out for something in the rain. In the end, I boiled water for instant soup and gnawed on some crackers I kept for emergencies. The German stove lit immediately. The unfamiliar room and the crumbly cracker in my mouth made the sound of the rain seem particularly sad. I wanted to hear my fiancé’s voice, but there was no telephone. No television or radio or stereo, either. With nothing else to do, I went to the front hall, where Juju was lying on the floor, and scooped him up in my arms. Startled, he wriggled and wagged his tail with delight. In the afternoon, I decided to repaint the bathroom. Like the other rooms in the house, it was quite small—just a porcelain tub, a chrome faucet, and a towel rack. Still, it didn’t feel cramped, perhaps because the ceiling was high and there was a large window. The room had been painted a romantic shade of pink, by the German student, I guessed. There were faint traces of color on the edges of the tiles, but it had faded after long years of steam and soap.
I changed into old clothes and put on rubber gloves. I turned on the ventilation fan and opened the window. It was still raining.
The fresh paint looked better on the walls than I had expected, and the bathroom soon seemed bright and inviting. Occasionally, a drop of rain would come in through the window, landing on an area that I had just painted. I moved the brush carefully, concentrating on getting an even coat. When I was about half done, the buzzer on the front door rang. It was the first time I had heard it, and it took me by surprise. There was something wild about the sound, like the cry of an animal. When I opened the door, I found a boy, perhaps three years old, and a man in his thirties, who appeared to be the boy’s father. They wore identical clear-plastic raincoats with the hoods pulled up over their heads. The coats were dripping wet, and rain fell from them onto the floor. “We’re sorry to bother you on such a rainy day,” the man said, without introducing himself or saying why he had come. “Have you just moved in?” I was a bit taken aback. “Well,” I answered vaguely. “It’s a nice neighborhood,” the man continued, glancing over at Juju, who was stretched out on the floor. “Near the ocean, but still very peaceful.” The child stood quietly, holding tightly to his father’s hand. His yellow boots, as tiny as toys, were also covered with raindrops. There was a silence.
“Are you suffering some anguish?” the man asked abruptly. When I heard this, I realized that he was probably a member of some sort of cult. Proselytizers from these groups often pick days when the weather is bad, and they often bring children with them—which never fails to throw me. Still, there was something about these two that felt different from those I had encountered before. In fact, there was something that set them apart from anyone else who had ever come to my door.
To begin with, they were empty-handed. No pamphlets or books or cassettes. They didn’t even have umbrellas. They just stood there holding hands, with their free arms dangling straight down at their sides. They seemed the picture of simple modesty.
Furthermore, neither of them was smiling—certainly not the insistent, overconfident smile you see on the faces of religious fanatics. On the other hand, they didn’t appear sullen or antisocial, either. I had the impression that they might vanish if I stared at them for too long. Yet, despite this fragile quality, their appearance made a deep impression on me. I’m not sure why, but I decided to try to answer the man’s question. I repeated the word “anguish” to myself a few times, but the meaning remained somehow out of reach, as if it were an unfamiliar philosophical term. As they waited, they stood looking at Juju and me, the rain still dripping from their coats. “That’s a very difficult question,” I said, hesitating a moment longer. “It is indeed,” the man said. “First off, I’m not really sure that I understand the meaning of the word ‘anguish.’ In a manner of speaking, the rain in winter, wet boots, or this dog lying here in the doorway could all be considered a kind of anguish.” “You’re right about that,” the man said, nodding several times. “Almost anything can seem elusive once you try to define it.” After that, he said nothing more. It was an awkward silence, the kind you can’t pretend not to notice. I could have asked them to leave, could have told them I was busy. After all, I was in the middle of painting. The fact that I didn’t probably had something to do with the peculiar aura they seemed to emit. “Do I absolutely have to answer? I’m not sure I see any link between you and me and your question. I’m here, you’re there, and the question is floating between us—and I don’t see any reason to change anything about that situation. It’s like the rain falling without a thought for the dog’s feelings.” I looked down, running my finger over the spots of paint on my clothes. “The rain falling without a thought for the dog’s feelings.” He repeated the words quietly to himself. Juju threw his head back and yawned. “I think you could say that that’s a perfect response, and I don’t need to bother you anymore. We’ll be going now. Goodbye.”
The man bowed politely, and a moment later the boy gave a quick nod. Then they disappeared into the rain. It was a straightforward departure, without fanfare or a lingering farewell. For a minute, I stood there wondering why they had come and where they were going, but then I remembered my painting and I thought no more about it. As I closed the door, I noticed that there were two puddles where they had stood. I hung a spice rack on the wall in the kitchen, waxed the floor in the hall, and planted a flower bed in one corner of the yard, and before I knew it several days had passed. I moved around the house doing my chores in silence. There was so much to do and, moreover, the wedding was so close that I wasn’t a bit lonely, despite being alone. Still, now and then, when I needed a change of scenery, I took Juju out for a walk.
We wandered about looking for the things we would need for our life in the new house—a bank, a salon, a drugstore. The neighborhood could hardly be called lively, but it had all the basics. From time to time, we’d pass an old person, out for a quiet stroll.
Early one afternoon, after making our way through a maze of narrow streets, we climbed a slope and found ourselves on a sunny embankment that ran along the shore. Beyond the bank, a thin line of sea blended with the blue sky. Freighters dotted the horizon. Juju broke into a run, and his chain snapped taut, glistening in the sunlight. Everything seemed to be bathed in a peaceful warmth. As we walked along the bank, the sea gradually spread out before us. Seagulls flew by, so close that it seemed I could reach out and touch them. A red mail truck passed us, moving slowly. At the base of the embankment there was an elementary school. It was an ordinary three-story building of reinforced concrete, with a gymnasium attached, the usual boxes for the students’ shoes by the door, and a rabbit hutch in one corner of the playground. Juju suddenly dashed down the grassy slope, heading straight for the back entrance to the school. I had no choice but to follow him, and that’s how I found them, standing by a window at the gate. Except for the raincoats, they looked exactly the same. Holding hands and standing very still. I was sure that they wouldn’t remember me, but the man seemed to make the connection right away. “Sorry to have bothered you the other day,” he said with the same polite bow. “Not at all,” I said, bowing quickly in turn. Juju was pacing between us, rattling his chain in excitement. The boy couldn’t take his eyes off the dog. “Are you working?” I asked, wondering whether “work” was the right word. “No. We’re taking a short break,” the man answered. I hadn’t been able to tell from their raincoats, but they were extremely well dressed. The man wore an elegant dark-green suit, and the boy wore a pure-wool sweater and spotless white kneesocks. For the early afternoon and in such an unlikely neighborhood, they were quite conspicuous. “That’s a nice dog.” “Thank you.” “What is he called?” “His name is Juju. Your son is pretty cute, too.” “Thanks.” “How old is he?” “Three years and two months.” After that exchange, there seemed to be nothing else for us to talk about. Silence blew in like the wind, and I was reminded that the only thing that remained between us was “anguish.” I was tempted to make my escape before he said the word again, but the fleeting shadow in his eyes held me there. The area around the back gate of the school was awash with noise: a recorder-and-organ ensemble was playing in the music room, children were running on the playground, a teacher was whistling, and the faint moan of a ship’s horn rose from the sea. I looked down at the ground and tried to separate each individual sound from the others. Juju had found a
he was curled up by one of the gateposts. “Can I pet your dog?” the boy asked suddenly. It was the first time I had heard him speak, but his voice was strong and clear.
“Of course,” I said, relieved that someone had broken the silence. “He likes it if you stroke him here,” I added, rubbing Juju’s neck. Juju closed his eyes and licked my cheek with his pale-pink tongue. The boy let go of his father’s hand and reached out timidly to pat Juju’s hindquarters. His chubby little fingers disappeared into the spotted fur. “Do you have business here at the school?” I asked, turning back to the man. “No, we were just looking at the cafeteria.” He pronounced the word “cafeteria” slowly, as if it had special significance, and he glanced at the large window next to us. “The cafeteria?” “Yes,” he nodded. The window clearly belonged to the cafeteria. Lunch had apparently just ended, and the dishes were being washed. Large birdcage-like baskets crammed with plates and bowls and spoons were moving along conveyor belts at an easy pace, like horses on a carrousel. Along the belts, there were various stations that resembled the disinfectant showers at swimming pools. When a basket reached a station, it would disappear for a few seconds into a haze of liquid spraying from nozzles on all sides and then re?merge on the other side, wet and shining. “For some reason, it fascinates him. He would watch it all day if I let him.” “I wonder what he finds so interesting?” “I don’t know. Children get obsessed with the strangest things.” The man smiled for the first time in my presence—not the smile of a cult member, of course, but something much simpler and more natural.
“I’m not sure I see the connection between a sweet little boy like this and a cafeteria.” “Perhaps it’s some strange complex circuit that’s impossible for us to imagine,” the man murmured. The boy had quickly grown comfortable with Juju and was now pulling his tail and draping himself over his back. Juju was patiently tolerating this treatment. In the cafeteria, workers in white uniforms, masks, and caps made their way back and forth among the conveyor belts. One of them adjusted the direction of the shower nozzles while another took the clean dishes from the end of the belt to the dryer. They hurried about in silence, and the whole place—the machines, the floors, the windows—seemed to sparkle with cleanliness. It looked more like a small, efficient factory than a school cafeteria. “In fact, it’s much more interesting to watch in the morning,” the man said. “Really?” We were lined up now, leaning against the window. “Of course. They have to prepare lunch for more than a thousand children—a thousand rolls, a thousand fried shrimp, a thousand slices of lemon, a thousand cartons of milk. Can you imagine?”
I shook my head.
“When such vast amounts of food are spread out in front of you, even a grownup can’t help being impressed.” He rubbed at the fogged window, and as he did his hand came so close to my face that I was afraid he could feel my breath. His fingers were long and slender. “A thousand onions, ten kilos of butter, fifty litres of vegetable oil, a hundred boxes of spaghetti. Everything is perfectly calculated, and it runs like clockwork. They’ve got all
they just have to program the computer for fried shrimp—I think the control room is on the second floor—and the machines start making it. There’s even a machine to devein the shrimp. Amazing, no?” He glanced over at me and then looked back at the cafeteria. “The shrimp are all lined up lengthwise on a conveyor belt, and at a certain point a blade comes out and slices straight down their backs. It never misses by even a hair. If you stare at it too long, it makes you dizzy. Then the shrimp move on to other stations, where they’re rolled in flour and e it’s all perfectly arranged so that they get evenly coated without anything being wasted. At the end of the belt, they drop into the oil, as meekly as if they’d been hypnotized. And, finally, they’re lifted out at just the right moment so that they’re done to a perfect golden brown, never over- or undercooked.” The man closed his eyes for a minute. The dish-washing continued, and no one seemed to pay any attention to us. From the music room now, I could hear the sound of castanets and triangles. “You describe it beautifully,” I said. “I can just picture them—a thousand fried shrimp coming down the line.” “I’m glad,” he said, running his hand lightly through his hair. I caught a faint whiff of cologne, like the fresh scent of the sea. “But how long does the washing go on?” I asked, as basket after basket passed by. “Until around the time the children get out of school.” “You seem to know a lot about it,” I said. “A real cafeteria expert.” “Not at all,” he said, smiling timidly. “We’ve been making the rounds in this neighborhood for almost a month, and we stop here every day. We come when my son is in a bad mood, or sometimes when I need a break. There was no cafeteria at the school in the neighborhood where we were before this, and it seemed a little sad. Of all the cafeterias we’ve seen, this one is definitely first class.” Unable to think of anything to say, I just nodded. I had never given any thought to the idea that there might be different classes of cafeteria. “So you go around to different neighborhoods and canvass or do missionary work. Is that it?” When I did speak, I chose my words as carefully as I could. “Well, yes, something like that.” As soon as I mentioned his work, he b it was as if he were more comfortable with the word “cafeteria” than with “anguish.” Tired of petting Juju, the boy came and stood between us. Strands of the dog’s fine hair clung to the front of his sweater. “Daddy, what are they having for lunch tomorrow?” “Hamburgers, I’d say.” “How do you know?” “I saw them bringing the meat grinder from the storeroom, the one that looks like a big snow-cone machine. So I’m pretty sure.” “Great!” the boy said. The man wiped the window again, and for a few minutes I just studied their two profiles reflected in the glass. Little by little, everything was being arranged. Some friends sent a quilt as a wedding present, our white dishes were lined up on the shelves, and the washing machine was installed. All these items waited quietly for our new life to begin. My fiancé came one Sunday and extended the porch to make a drying rack for clothes. He had found some cheap lumber for posts, which he embedded in deep holes in the yard. Then he sanded down bamboo poles until they were smooth and ran them between the posts. When he had finished, we sat on the porch for a while and admired his handiwork. We couldn’t afford a phone, so we had to send telegrams when we wanted to get in touch with each other. Some of them were about important matters—“Wedding rehearsal at church, next Saturday, 10 a.m.” or “File for change of address A.S.A.P.”—but others were simpler. There was one that was only two words long: “Good night.” This one came just as I was getting into bed, and that made it especially sweet. Standing in my pajamas in the dim light of the hallway, I must have read those two words fifty times. Each letter seemed to sink into my mind. Juju, who had been roused from a deep sleep by the delivery, watched me disapprovingly through half-open eyes. After our meeting, I made a habit of walking along the embankment above the school whenever I took Juju out. But I didn’t see anyone at the gate again. Nor could I see into the cafeteria window from the top of the bank, no matter how much I looked. It seemed to be covered with something opaque, though I could never tell whether it was steam or spray or what. Once, I saw a truck with the logo of a chicken company on its side parked near the gate. As I walked along the bank, I pictured the birds, splayed out on the conveyor belt, eyes staring vacantly as they moved through the various carefully designed steps that would convert them into fried chicken. I finally met the man and his son again one afternoon ten days later. They were sitting on some boxes that had been left under the cafeteria window. The boy was wearing a warm wool cap with a pompom. His legs dangled over the edge of the box. The man was staring off into the distance, his chin resting in his hands. Juju saw them first and ran tumbling down the hill, his tail wagging furiously. “It’s Juju!” the boy called in his clear, piercing voice as he jumped down from the box. The pompom bobbed on top of his cap. “Hello,” I gasped, breathless from having been pulled along behind Juju. “Hello,” the man answered with the same ambiguous smile. The box they’d been sitting on had held carrots: on top was a picture of a fresh, bright-orange carrot. The other boxes in the stack had held frozen squid, pudding, corn, and Worcestershire sauce. The schoolchildren had already gone home for the day, and the music room and the playground were quiet. The yard was in shadow, and silence filled the school like stagnant water. The rabbits huddled together in a corner of their hutch. The cafeteria, too, seemed empty. The window was clear now, and I could see all sorts of details that had been obscured before: the shine of the stainless-s the cut of the collars on the white uniforms the color of the switch on the conveyor belt. “They seem to be done for the day,” I said, sitting down next to the man. “Yes, they just finished,” he answered.
Juju ran around in the last rays of sunlight, dragging his chain, while the boy ran after him, trying to catch his tail. Beyond them, the sun was sinking into the sea, dyeing the water a deep amber that seemed to swallow up the waves, the boats, the lighthouse, and everything else. Seagulls were flying among the masts in the deserted marina. “I’m sorry he keeps pestering Juju.” “Not at all. Juju seems to love it.” “How long have you had him?” “It’s been ten years. I’ve spent almost half my life with him, so he’s part of all my most important memories. It’s like those photos that come with the date printed on them—all I have to do is remember how big Juju was or what kind of collar he was wearing and I can figure out when something happened.” “I understand,” he said, kicking at a pebble with the toe of his plain brown shoe. After that, we talked about dogs for a while. I told him about discovering a dog zoo in a hot-springs resort in the mountains, and about the hysterical pregnancy suffered by a Maltese that used to live next door to me. He asked various questions, nodding solemnly at my answers, and from time to time he even smiled. “When I see a cafeteria in the evening, it makes me think of a pool in the rain.” We had exhausted the subject of dogs and fallen silent for a minute when he introduced this new—and apparently inscrutable—topic. The line sounded as if it had been plucked from a modernist poem or else from some old nursery rhyme. “A pool . . . in the rain?” I repeated, trying out each word. “That’s right—a pool in the rain. Have you ever been in a swimming pool in the rain?” “I’m not sure.” “When I think about a pool in the rain, it’s almost more than I can stand.” The clouds had become striated with pink, tinting the sky a deep rose color. Evening had overtaken us as we talked. His face was close to mine, and I traced the outline of his features with my eyes. I could feel his breath, his pulse, the heat from his body. He coughed quietly and rubbed his temple with his forefinger before he spoke again. “I didn’t know how to swim when I was in elementary school, so the time my class spent in the pool was painful for me. You could even say that I learned everything there was to know about suffering right there in that pool. First, there was fear. The water in the pool seemed to bear down on me with a terrible crushing force. It was horrible. And then there was shame. Children who couldn’t swim had to wear special red bathing caps to make them stand out among the black-and-white striped ones that all the other children wore. Since we couldn’t swim, we’d just bob on the surface at the shallow end. I was determined to learn to swim and prove myself, but what I really wanted was to avoid attracting any attention at all. That’s another thing I learned from the pool: determination.”
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Juju, having exhausted himself, lay down and rested his muzz the boy wrapped himself around the dog’s neck as if he were curling up on a sofa. “And when it rained the pool was even more depressing. The rain that fell on the deck left dark stains, and the surface of the pool boiled with drops, as if a school of tiny fish were waiting for their dinner. I always lowered myself into the water slowly. My classmates would be swimming by on their way to the far end of the pool. In those days, I was quite delicate. My ribs and collarbone seemed to poke right through my skin, even my hips and thighbones. My swimsuit wrinkled up on my backside. I was cold when it rained, even in summer. During the rest period, I shivered behind the faucet we used to rinse our eyes, and every bone in my body seemed to rattle. When swimming class was finally over and I could take off my cap, my hair was always dyed red.” He was quiet for a moment, picking at the tape on the box, and then he concluded, “I know this can’t be very interesting for you.” “No, it is,” I said, quite honestly. “But you still haven’t got from the pool in the rain to the cafeteria in the evening. You can’t stop until you do!” We looked at each other for a moment and laughed. One of the rabbits in the hutch was watching us as it chewed on a cabbage leaf. “I was never teased because I couldn’t swim. At least, I don’t remember anything like that. In the end, it was my own problem. I think you have to go through some sort of rite of passage, at least once in your life, that allows you to become part of the group. This one just took me a little longer than usual. I’m sure that’s what it was.” “I think I understand,” I said, studying his profile. “So, whenever I see a cafeteria in the evening I can’t help remembering that painful moment in my life—my long rite of passage. Though I suppose that still doesn’t explain anything.” He looked down and kicked another pebble. The cafeteria window had begun to darken. Everything had been carefully dried and neatly arranged: the nozzles on the showers, the dish baskets stacked in the corner, the pots on the shelves. I could almost hear the sound of the rain on the tin roof of the swimming-pool changing room. I pictured the slender legs fluttering along the bottom of the pool like so many ailing fish, and the boy with dyed red hair, wrapped in a towel, trembling quietly. One after another, these images floated up in the cafeteria window. “At about the same time, another thing happened to me,” he said. “I stopped being able to eat.” “But why?” “There were probably a lot of reasons. My various complexes, my timid personality, my family . . . lots of things. But the direct cause was the cafeteria.” “So we’re there at last.” “Yes. You see, the problem was that I peeked in the cafeteria one day before lunchtime. I can’t remember why I was there at that hour—why I wasn’t in class—but for some reason I stood at the back door and watched the commotion as the staff got ready for lunch. I’d never paid any attention to the cafeteria before. This was more than twenty-five years ago, so the kitchen was completely different from this one. It was in an old wooden building, cramped and dark, more like a barn. I can still remember every detail. The menu that day was cream stew and potato salad, and the first thing that struck me was the smell. It was heavy and suffocating, like nothing I’d ever smelled before. There are lots of foul odors in the world, but this one was different and unsettling because it was linked to the food that I would soon be eating. The smells of the vats of stew and the potato salad were mingling in the cafeteria, fermenting, denaturing.” I leaned back on the box. Juju twitched his pointed ears. The child remained wrapped around the dog’s neck, perhaps asleep. “The scene in front of me was all too real, but at the same time it was so far beyond anything I could have imagined that it seemed fantastic. The women who worked in the cafeteria were fat, and their flesh bulged from the elastic cuffs of their uniforms and the tops of their boots. They seemed buoyant, as if they would float when tossed into water. One of them was stirring the stew with a shovel—the sort of metal shovel you’d use in construction. She was flushed, and she kept one foot on the rim of the enormous pot as she worked. And, as she stirred the thick white liquid with her rusty shovel, chunks of fatty meat and bits of onions and carrots churned up before my eyes. The salad was in the next vat. Another woman had climbed into the vat and was crushing the potatoes with her black rubber boots. Each time she lifted her foot, I could see bits of potato clinging to the sole. The more she worked, the more intricate the potato pattern became.” He coughed once and then continued. “I couldn’t look away. I wish I could explain how I felt at that moment, but I can’t. If it were a feeling you could sum up with some common word like ‘horror’ or ‘disgust,’ then I’m sure I would have forgotten all about it long ago. But before I was overcome by emotions my mind was imprinted with these incomprehensible images—globs of stew dripping from the shovel, boots buried in mashed potatoes.” “And after that you couldn’t eat?” I asked quietly, trying to guess where the story was going. He nodded. “Even now, the rattle of plastic dishes or the footsteps of someone reporting for kitchen duty can bring back every detail of that scene. I and, after that, cafeterias had the same effect on me as pools did. I knew that no matter how hard I flailed I was still going to sink to the bottom, just as I knew that every time I tried to take a bite of cafeteria food the fat ladies with their shovels and boots would be there to make sure that I choked. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I left the house one morning with my backpack, and instead of going to school I wandered through town. Of course, it was a day when my class was scheduled to go to the pool. As I walked along, I kicked the bag with my swimsuit and red bathing cap, keeping it aloft with my knees. It felt as though I wandered for a long time, but in reality my grandfather found me after a couple of hours.” “So you were back in school by lunchtime?” “No, I was lucky. My grandfather wasn’t angry at all, and he didn’t seem anxious to take me back to school. He had been a skillful tailor in his day, but when he retired he took to drinking and got into all sorts of trouble. To the point that no one in the family wanted to have anything to do with him. He’d get into fights, sleep in the street, destroy traffic lights, that kind of thing. In fact, I’m sure he wasn’t out looking he was probably just drunk already and staggering around town. ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Fancy meeting you here. It’s not often we have an opportunity like this, so I’m going to show you a secret spot.’ Then he took my hand and led me in the opposite direction from school. “I wasn’t usually very comfortable around my grandfather, with his sake breath and his sandpaper palms, but that day I clung tightly to his hand and followed him. In his other hand he held a can of beer, and he occasionally took a sip as we walked. Eventually, we came to a warehouse district at the edge of town, to the ruins of a concrete building. ‘That’s it,’ my grandfather said, pointing with his can. It looked like the remains of a factory that had closed long ago. The doors were off the hinges and there were holes in the walls. When we went inside, we could feel the wind blowing straight through. Looking up, I saw patches of sky in the ceiling, as if they’d been cut out with scissors. On the floor was a deep layer of dirt, tinted red with rust, which made a gritty sound at every step. And everywhere were piles of junk: nuts and bolts, springs, batteries, empty soda bottles, a plastic hair band, a harmonica, a thermometer, all sleeping quietly in the dust. There were several solidlooking machines, also thickly coated with dirt and rust, and a ‘Safety First’ sign that had fallen off the wall. “My grandfather led me to a machine with rows of switches and levers and told me to sit there. It looked like a printing press or perhaps an old-fashioned dryer, but whatever it was it definitely didn’t work anymore. I hung my bag over one of the levers. “My grandfather must have been nearing the end of his beer, because he started peering into the can between sips and the pace of his drinking slowed. ‘Do you know what they used to make here?’ he said. When he spoke, the beer foam on his lips flew off in all directions. Relieved that he still hadn’t asked me why I was skipping school, I shook my head encouragingly. “ ‘Chocolate,’ he said, almost as if he were boasting. “ ‘Chocolate? Really?’ I asked. “ ‘That’s right. They’d put cocoa beans and milk and sugar in that machine over there in the corner, and mix it up good, and out would come liquid chocolate. By the time it reached the next machine, it had cooled a bit and looked more like thick brown syrup. Then when it finally got to this roller here it was turned into a big sheet of chocolate.’ He poked his foot at the machine I was sitting on. ‘A huge chocolate bar, as wide as two tatami mats and as long as you wanted it to be, so long as you let the rollers go!’ “ ‘Are you sure?’ I said, excited by his description of the fantastic chocolate bar. “ ‘If you think I’m lying, just take a whiff.’ “I stood up on the base of the machine and brought my nose near to the roller, half closing my eyes to get a better scent. I was overcome with a pleasant sensation, as if I were being wrapped up in something large and comforting. Somewhere far off, the cicadas were humming. At first I smelled only iron, a metallic, dry odor. But as I stood there I began to catch a faint hint of a sweet, familiar scent, like a glimpse of a dream. “ ‘Well?’ my grandfather said. “ ‘You’re right,’ I said, lingering for a moment, my hands resting on the rough roller. “ ‘If you ever get the urge for chocolate, you can always come here. This roller has made so much chocolate that it’s not going to mind if you come and sniff some of it from time to time.’ Having finally finished his beer, he threw the can on the floor. It made a sad, hollow sound as it rolled away. I realized that he probably had no more money to buy alcohol. In order to stop him from drinking too much, he was kept on a tight budget. I reached into my backpack and pulled out the envelope with the money I was supposed to give to my teacher for a school trip.
“ ‘You can buy some more with this,’ I said.
“ ‘Thanks,’ he said, and I saw the corners of his red eyes wrinkle with delight.” By the time the man’s long story ended, the evening had covered us in shadow. The outline of his face seemed to be vanishing into the darkness. The boy, still sprawled on Juju, lay motionless in the gloom. I wanted to tell him something, so much that it felt like a weight on my chest. If I didn’t, it seemed that his face might actually disappear. “Is that the end of the story?” I said, taking great care with each word. “It is.” He gave a slight shake to the hair on his forehead. “But what happened with your swimming class and the cafeteria?” “There isn’t much to tell. I learned to swim, and my grandfather died of a malignant tumor. That’s all.” We sat for a moment staring out at the twilight and then stood up. Time had been suspended as he talked, but now it resumed. “Time to go home.” At the sound of his father’s voice, the boy opened his eyes. He blinked for a moment, as if trying to recapture his dream. Juju’s tail wagged, rubbing against the child’s cheek. “I suppose I’ll see you here again,” I said, taking Juju’s chain in my hand. “We move on to a new area tomorrow. A bigger town, closer to the mountains.” The boy ran over to him, and he took his hand. “We’ll have to say goodbye to the cafeteria.” On the other side of the window, the kitchen was slowly vanishing, as if sinking into a swamp. “I hope there’s a nice one in your new town,” I said. He smiled without nodding. “Goodbye,” he said. The boy waved to Juju, and the pompom on his cap shook. “Goodbye.” I waved, too. They walked off in the fading light. Juju and I stood watching them until they became a tiny point in the distance and then vanished. I suddenly wanted to read my “Good night” telegram one more time. I could feel the exact texture of the paper, see the letters, feel the air of the night it had arrived. I wanted to read it over and over, until the words melted away. Tightening my grip on the chain, I began to run in the opposite direction. ? (Translated, from the Japanese, by Stephen Snyder.)
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