I drifted to the back of the group and waited until our teenage minders were distracted by a poster of a young woman, tartily dressed and inappropriately named Madonna. Then, when I was sure no one was looking, I slipped quietly away, escaping via a nearby fire exit. Out in the open, I retraced my steps, heading down to the water’s edge. At Porta de Santiago I paused to buy myself a bottle of purple Fanta, for which I have an abnormal weakness. The athletic young woman who ran the stall smiled at me sweetly, and I felt obliged to buy a bag of pickled mango too; I discarded it in some bushes as soon as I was out of sight. On the esplanade that runs along the seawall, I strolled under acacia trees whose tiny leaves lay scattered like confetti across the ground. In the deep shadows of the undergrowth young men and women canoodled, too drenched in young love to notice my hobbling presence. I stopped at a dirty wooden bench, looking out at the mud-grey sea. A raft of flotsam, ensnared by a fisherman’s net, drifted placidly on the scum-topped waves. I did not have to wait long before I heard a tuneless whistle and a soft coo-cooing from the bushes behind me. “Hello-o, mister,” a voice called. I turned around and saw a young woman leaning against a tree, her powdered face accentuated by scarlet lips. She sashayed towards me, eyes hidden behind huge mirrored sunglasses. I knew at once that she was a transvestite, and a prostitute too. Slowly, I began to relax, washed by the waves of a familiar excitement as she sat with me and struck up the usual anodyne patter: what’s my name, where do I come from, what nice thick hair I have. The girls may come and go but their talk remains the same. Always, I invent the answers. It’s easier for both of us. How could I respond truthfully and fully to the question “Where is your home?” I couldn’t possibly begin. My only dwelling place is now no longer on this earth — I destroyed it many years ago. And so, over the years, I have sought occasional refuge in the fleeting company of these glossy-haired girls. Their hands are always quick and smooth, their lips cool and efficient. I do not seek these girls to relive the fervid longings of younger days. Memories are things to be buried. They die, just as people do, and with their passing, all traces of the life they once touched are erased, forever and completely. Many years may pass until another encounter with such a girl, but I know the next one will be just as this one was. She will finish with me, smiling kindly at my flaccid failure and earnest pleadings; she will take her small fee and deposit it swiftly in her handbag; and then she will walk away, leaving me whimpering quietly to myself, all alone before the silent, muddy sea.
THE FIRST TIME I saw Kunichika he was standing under a tree looking through a pair of binoculars. I was returning from an outing with Johnny and chose to walk along the ridge of hills that ran above the rest house. I walked down the path that led to the rest house, singing “La donna è mobile” with much brio, when I suddenly noticed a tiny mirrored glint, a pinprick flash of light from the escarpment above me. It took me a while to locate him standing in the shade of a small tree whose tiny, twisted trunk seemed all the more tiny and twisted next to his easy, erect figure. Never one to leave the itch of curiosity unscratched, I scrambled up the rocky path, through a tangle of trees, to where he was standing. He did not drop the binoculars when I approached; for a second I thought he had not noticed me.
“Don’t move,” he said, binoculars still held to his eyes. He spoke softly, in an even voice that compelled me strangely to obey without the faintest demurral. “Over there, in those trees,” he continued quietly in his tempered bass-baritone, “do you see?”
“What?” I whispered.
“A golden oriole. What a beautiful bird.”
I peered hard at the canopy of leaves ahead of us, expecting the flash of unmistakable yellow-and-black plumage, but I could see nothing in the shadowy recesses. “Where?” I asked.
“It’s gone now,” he said, lowering his binoculars and offering me his hand with an easy smile. “Mamoru Kunichika. Pleased to meet you.” I learnt that he had arrived in the Valley only that day; that he was staying at the rest house; that he was an academic with a position at Kyoto University.
“How wonderful,” I said. “What is your field of study?”
“Anthropology,” he said without a moment’s hesitation. “And linguistics,” he added, as if it was an afterthought.
