Ms Ice Sandwich Read online

  MIEKO KAWAKAMI

  Ms ICE

  SANDWICH

  translated by

  LOUISE HEAL KAWAI

  PUSHKIN PRESS

  Contents

  Title Page

  Ms Ice Sandwich

  About the Authors

  About the Publisher

  Copyright

  Ms ICE SANDWICH

  TWO-HUNDRED-THIRTEEN to Florida, three-hundred-twenty to polite, three-hundred-eighty to church medicine, four-hundred-fifteen to choco skip, four-hundred-thirty to your forties, vegetable boots is always five-hundred. Five-hundred-twelve is a gravestone for rain; the big cat bench where all the girls like to hang out in the evenings is six-hundred-seven.

  If someone speaks to me I lose count, so I keep my head down and try not to catch anyone’s eye. Sometimes there’s a crack in the white line I’m following, and sometimes it breaks off for a bit, but I keep my concentration, and the soles of my trainers land spot-on the line and I do it with a steady rhythm. Seven-hundred-thirty-one is souvenirs, eight-hundred-twenty, wait a minute, wait a minute, eight-hundred-eighty a famous writer, and nine-hundred-twelve a French person. At this point it’s suddenly crowded, full of people, and bicycles are lined up like mechanical goats.

  The automatic doors open and out pour people holding white plastic shopping bags stuffed with food. I guess they’re on their way home. Most of them are grown-ups. One in five has bought those leeks with their green tops poking out, and the bags look like they’re about to burst. Just as I’m thinking how most of the stuff they’ve bought is going to be put in their mouths, I’m surprised by people saying hello, good evening to me. I say it back. Then, careful not to bump into anyone, on to the potato zone, nine-hundred-thirty. And then always, without fail, it’s nine-hundred-fifty exactly to Ms Ice Sandwich.

  The cheapest sandwich you can buy there is the egg sandwich. There are two to a pack, but they’re super-thin, and I come every day, or every other day, to buy them. If Mum sends me to the supermarket, I can pay for my sandwich with her money, so I like to hang around the house hoping she’ll ask me to go shopping for her, but sometimes I have to use my own pocket money. I get one hundred yen a day five times a week, Monday to Friday, and I make sure I put half of it in my coin purse. My sandwich money. To tell the truth, I don’t even like sandwiches that much; in fact, for meals I definitely like rice instead of bread, and for a snack it’s much better to buy a big bag of crisps or something, and eat them really slowly one piece at a time, and anyway, I never really get that hungry. I get full after I’ve eaten about half of my school lunch, and that might be why I’m so skinny and I don’t seem to be getting any taller. But I can’t help it if I don’t like what they serve. Mum got so worried she came to school and showed my teacher how skinny my arms were for a boy, but now that I think about it, that was ages ago, and it seems like she’s forgotten all about it by now, or maybe she’s just given up, or maybe the moment’s passed, or that’s what it feels like.

  Around the train station, there’s only the chemist’s and the level crossing and the supermarket that are lit up at night. But to be honest there’s not much there in the daytime either—this town is really just made up of houses, and the top floor of that two-storey supermarket is full of laundry detergent and buckets and dishes and toilet paper, all those things that’s not food, and the meat and the vegetables and yogurt and fish and stuff is all on the ground floor, and everyone in the town comes here nearly every day to buy what they need. I watch Ms Ice Sandwich from the only door in and out of the supermarket; she’s always standing behind a big round glass case, just to the left and a little bit behind the cash registers, with that look on her face that’s like a mixture of surprise and boredom, as she’s selling sandwiches and salads and bread and things like that.

  “Ms Ice Sandwich” is a name I made up, of course. I thought of it the minute I first saw her. Ms Ice Sandwich’s eyelids are always painted with a thick layer of a kind of electric blue, exactly the same colour as those hard ice lollies that have been sitting in our freezer since last summer. There’s one more awesome thing about her—if you watch when she looks down, there’s a sharp dark line above her eyes, as if when she closed her eyes, someone started to draw on two extra eyes with a felt-tip pen but stopped halfway. It’s the coolest thing. And then when she looks straight at me, she has these enormous eyes which are so big I feel like I get swallowed up in them. They look exactly like the great big eyes of the dogs that I read about in a storybook long ago… What is the title of that book? Well, it’s not only the title that I’ve forgotten, I can’t even remember what happens in the story, but I do remember the faces of the dogs with their gigantic eyes; it must have been a children’s picture book or something… Anyway, Ms Ice Sandwich has eyes just like those dogs do in that story, which has a soldier in it, and a castle, and there’s a princess—that story. The dogs with the giant eyes run around like crazy everywhere. Where was it they came from? And then someone got married to someone else, or they didn’t get married, I forget what the story was about.

  The day I first saw Ms Ice Sandwich, I was with Mum, but when I said out loud in surprise, Look at her eyes!, Mum pretended not to hear me and started talking about something totally different, and it wasn’t until we’d paid for our shopping and got completely outside the supermarket that she started in on me. You have to stop that! You cannot say things like that out loud, she can hear you, it’s rude. Mum’s face is awesome whenever she gets annoyed, if there was an animal that didn’t know what being annoyed meant, then just one look at my mum’s face and they’d get the idea. You could make a rubber stamp of Mum’s face as a demo. I say, Why can’t I talk out loud about her eyes? They’re huge, they’re amazing! Mum says, It doesn’t matter what they are, it’s not proper to talk about other people’s faces. Me: Why? Her: Because! All the way home I keep asking Mum why, but now she’s busy playing with her mobile phone and just keeps nodding and saying yeah every so often. Well, I’m kind of getting used to her being like that these days, not paying attention to me, but the more we walk the more it bugs me, so I stop and say, If video games make you stupid, then what do mobile phones do to you? (This is me being real extreme to her.) She answers, What?, not stopping, I’m not playing a game, I’m updating something. It’s work. It’s hot, can we walk faster? And of course she hasn’t taken her eyes off the screen for a second, madly pressing buttons, and keeps on walking.

  Our house is the kind you can find anywhere around, one of those old brown houses made of wood with tiles on the roof, but last year, without warning, my mum suddenly had the entranceway and the room right next to it remodelled Western-style.

  Mum stood there with a smile on her face, looking at the new section of the house that had been knocked to pieces one moment and then rebuilt the next. I can’t start up without my own salon, she said, all happy, but if you ask me—and maybe I’m the only one who thinks this way—somehow the colours and the design don’t go together, are all mixed up, like she’s taken one of those little booths or stalls at an amusement park where you can buy snacks or stuff and stuck it in our house, it’s just really, really weird. It was so much better before with nothing there, and now every time I come home, it’s so embarrassing to have to look at that and it always makes me feel kind of bad.

  Mum’s into fortune telling and that kind of stuff, well, actually her job is something to do with that, but if you look too long at this new salon room that she’s set up, your eyes start to hurt from the red carpet, and the foreign furniture, and then there’s a computer, and she’s hung little angels on the walls, and on the floor next to the door is a sculpture thing with a sparkly, powdery surface like a massive sugar cube with spikes coming out of it that look like
swords that would really hurt if you sat on them by mistake. Well, her friends—or is it the people she works with?—or her customers?—anyway, these women come over and they talk on and on. But then sometimes, even though I know she has people over, a whole hour goes by with nobody saying a word, and I wonder what’s going on, so I creep right up close to the door and put my ear against it, and then out of nowhere I hear a noise as if somebody’s starting to cry… Anyway, I don’t know exactly what Mum’s doing in there, but sometimes she needs to talk to me about something and I get a chance to look at what’s going on inside the room. There are all these little bottles lined up on the table and people are going around taking a sniff of this one and that one, and banging on this thing like a cooking pot that makes a loud donging sound, anyway, everything in the room—my mum and the other women and the things and the air and every single bit of it—it’s very creepy. The full-on stink is terrible enough to give me a headache, and the donging pot has water in it, so there’s this horrid low echo in my ears, and the women’re all different people with different faces, but they all start looking the same and laughing the same way, and on their wrists they’re all wearing different-coloured bands of things that look like pearls. They hold their hands out over the pot, they drink something, they turn over cards and decide whether there’s a full moon that night or not… anyway this is how my mum spends most days—inviting people to come over to the house and they talk a lot.

  But I know the truth—the reason we can live here like this is because of Grandma.

  Grandma isn’t my mum’s mum. She’s my dad’s mum. He died when I was four years old. This house where I was born and I’ve lived all my life is Grandma’s house, and although my dad died, or maybe it was because my dad died—I’m not sure—but anyway because Grandma would be all alone, me and Mum stayed on living in the house and taking care of her, and so it somehow became OK for Mum to use a little bit of Grandma’s money and something called her pension, I think. Well, I guess now it’s become OK for her to use it any way she wants.

  Until recently, Grandma was really healthy, but one day, right after I started the second year at school, she couldn’t walk properly any more, and then a little while later, she couldn’t talk properly either, and then for the last two years, she hasn’t been able to get out of bed. So I guess she has no idea that her house has been altered in such a weird way, and when I think of her I can’t help feeling Mum did a really wrong and selfish thing, and I even start to get angry, but then I remember I’m just as guilty as her because I didn’t tell Grandma what was happening, and when I think of this I get this feeling like regret or sadness bubbling up inside me and my heart begins to pound. Still, there are times I also think that it’s probably better that my grandma never sees how messed up her house looks now, and I suppose that’s why I haven’t said anything to her. Anyway, I was sure I could make everybody at school laugh when I told them about all the weird changes in our house, but it turns out that Doo-Wop either has no taste whatsoever, or maybe he just doesn’t have any interest in that kind of thing in the first place, and all he says is Oh, you got more? More of what? We haven’t got more of anything, and that was the end of the conversation. Doo-Wop’s still totally obsessed with how to get some password code for some video game that everyone else got fed up and bored with long ago, and he won’t talk about anything but that game—not during calligraphy lessons, or at school, not even at the park after school. He isn’t really fitting in with the rest of us any more, but I don’t know if I should mention this to Doo-Wop, and then if I did decide to say something, how should I put it to him? And if I told him straight, then he might get annoyed and say all sorts of things back to me… I’ve been thinking about all kinds of stuff lately, about the money, and about Grandma… so seeing as tonight I’m not tired at all yet, I think I’ll go to bed and stare up at the ceiling and think about it all, and then I start thinking, What was it exactly that was what way?, and somehow the swirls in the grain of the wood start to expand and contract and I begin to feel sleepy, and then my head and my chest fill up with some kind of fog and I can’t seem to work this or that or anything out in my mind.

  The day I went shopping with Mum and saw Ms Ice Sandwich for the first time was the first day of swimming lessons in the summer holiday. I was really tired—well, I’m always like that after swimming—but anyway I started going to see Ms Ice Sandwich by myself after that. I get back from the pool and do a bit of my homework first, then when Mum asks me to go shopping for her—or even if she doesn’t—I walk there by my special system, calling out the right names at the right places, placing my feet on the white line at the edge of the road with total precision, all the way to Ms Ice Sandwich.

  Ms Ice Sandwich has really short hair, her head looks just like an onigiri rice ball with a sheet of nori wrapped tightly around it. Of course she’s got a nose and a mouth too, but all you notice when you see her are those eyes, then when afterwards you try to remember them, you know, what shape they are or what they looked like, you just can’t picture them exactly. At first I hold Mum’s shopping list in my right hand and pick up eggs and leeks and stuff and put them in the shopping basket. (What I want to know is why everyone has to buy leeks every single day—that stuff is tasteless!) And I’m trying to walk around the store as many times as possible, all the time glancing over at the sandwich counter, but when there aren’t any customers, Ms Ice Sandwich stands back at the far end of the glass case, and I can’t see her face. Then I wonder what I’m going to do now that I can’t see those big eyes, and I hang around a bit, and suddenly it’s like there’s a flash of light right in the middle of my forehead, and I decide to go and stand in front of the glass case and buy a sandwich like it’s normal, and I think what a cool plan I’ve come up with. I’m so nervous about making my first ever sandwich purchase, but then I manage to put a completely casual expression on my face, and somehow I do it. I buy a sandwich directly from Ms Ice Sandwich, and in the few seconds that it takes, I’m able to stare at Ms Ice Sandwich’s great big eyes. And from really close up too.

  Ms Ice Sandwich isn’t friendly at all. When the customers come and stand in front of the glass case and stare at all the sandwiches and stuff inside it, she never bothers to say Hello or Can I help you? or What can I do for you? or any of those usual things that people who work in shops say. She never speaks to anyone unless they speak to her first. When a customer asks for something, she doesn’t smile, she just stands there going clack clack with her silver pincers as she confirms the order: This is the kind you want? or You want two, right? Then she slips the sandwich into a bag without saying anything except how much it’s going to cost. But the way she handles those pincers, everything’s so quick and neat, it’s so cool, in the blink of an eye—not one second more—the sandwich she’s grabbed with the pincers has already disappeared into a plastic bag. I have no idea how she does it, and it doesn’t matter what shape the sandwich is, long or round or normal, Ms Ice Sandwich always manages to slip it spot on, straight into the bag. I could stand there all day and watch her do that, but to be honest, for me it’s Ms Ice Sandwich’s eyes that I really want to look at, and while she’s doing all that stuff with the pincers and sandwiches and bags, she’s looking downwards, and so that whenever she has customers, the entire time I can gaze at Ms Ice Sandwich’s ice-blue eyelids with their clean, dark line.

  I concentrate on Ms Ice Sandwich and I don’t ever want my turn to come. I hardly blink. Then when she finally takes my money and gives me the change and her eyelids turn upwards and I can see those great big eyes again, without any warning that squishy, yellowy, orangey stuff inside my head becomes extra bright, then that hollow place right under my chin, above my collarbone, feels like it’s being squeezed really tightly. It’s like that feeling you get when you swallow rice without chewing it properly first. And that lump begins to move from my throat and travel slowly, slowly all the way downwards, until it ends up in a bigger place, a kind of open, roomy space—a pl
ace soft like a rabbit’s ear. And with every breath I take, it begins to grow, it gets longer and wider. I’ve never seen the middle of the ocean or the edge of the sky, but maybe the kind of breeze that blows in those places now comes blowing in out of nowhere and I feel it wrapped around me. Like when you’re holding a cat and you touch its soft belly. Or sticking your finger in a jar of jam and stirring, then slowly sinking in all the rest of your fingers. Or licking the sweet condensed milk at the bottom of your bowl of strawberries. Or when a blanket brushes the top of your feet. Or when butter turns transparent when it melts over your pancakes. As I stand gazing at Ms Ice Sandwich, all of these things are happening to me, one on top of the other, right there in my rabbit’s ear.

  When I reach out to get my order from Ms Ice Sandwich, the air suddenly goes cold. She’s still turned in my direction, but her eyes have shifted to the next customer, and that magical breeze stops blowing. The blanket is ripped away, the condensed milk dries up, the cat runs off, and finally the rabbit’s ear droops. There’s nothing to do but to walk slowly towards the doors, head down, eyes fixed on the toes of my trainers. I glance up once I’m outside, but there’s nothing to see. I realize it’s the same old place in this same old town with all its houses squashed together. The stuffy summer evening air rises up from the ground, and it’s suddenly difficult to breathe. The place in my chest where I keep the air gets tighter and tighter, and I don’t know exactly what it is, but I do know that I’m going to find out sometime that somewhere in this town there’s something bad, and that those long shadows creeping up in the dark have come to tell me about it. Afraid of being caught by the shadows, I hurry home, my plastic sandwich bag swinging from my hand, and then the next day, I go to the supermarket again, and just like before I stare at Ms Ice Sandwich’s awesome eyes, which gives me a brand-new, really happy feeling. I do the same thing every day and that’s how I end up spending the whole summer filling myself with Ms Ice Sandwich’s eyes (and my stomach with her sandwiches).