The Snow in Japan (page 2)

Victor eased the bike alongside the street at the Noriyaka Finance Building and felt Keiko slip of the back.  He adjusted his green army satchel from his hip to his back and looked at her.  She looked comical with his over sized helmet and goggles on.  But even their silliness could not hide her beauty.  She looked amazing as she gave a little bow and rushed off to join the horde of other secretaries and typists dressed in the matching white blouses and rolled up tan pants.  Victor watched her as she deftly took her long black hair and corralled all the loose ends quickly into a pony tail tied with a blue piece of ribbon. He watched her as she and all the other young Japanese women filed into the building in matching outfits ready to start there matching days. But even in a sea of sameness she stood out.  Victor put his goggles on and helmet and before he started the bike he noticed that several of her coworkers were pointing at him and look back at Keiko disapprovingly as she walked in. Fuck them he thought as he rode away.

The Snow in Japan (page 1)

She wore his red motorcycle helmet. Her long black hair whipped around her face and over the goggles he had loaned her as he tore through the crowded Osaka Streets on his old beat up Triumph.  The streets were full of these motorcycles, an American invention.  And like the American soldiers who rode them, they seemed to be everywhere in Japan. She was sure that Victor was trying to scare her.  To get her to hold onto him tightly as he careened the machine dangerously close to large trucks weaving his way through slow or stopped traffic.  She felt the muscles in his back underneath of his white undershirt as she clung to him.  And for an instant she thought of her older brother and felt guilty at what he would have thought of her now, riding around with an American on the back of a motorcycle.  A young American probably very like the faceless one who had killed him But she shut her eyes and in a moment the thought was gone.  It was after all a new Japan.  And the war was over.  Victor hadn’t killed her brother- after all he had only been in the army a brief time.  He had just gotten to Japan a few months before.  To him everything was still new and exciting.  And she liked that.  There wasn’t the desperation of the grim reality that was all around her.  He seemed so different.  Different like the new Japan that his country was now trying to create.  And the war was over.  It was over and it was time to rebuild her country and to recreate their lives.  As she rushed to her new job through the morning traffic despite the sadness that nipped at her she felt an excitement.  She thought  there is always something exciting about the mornings.  It’s the best thing about being alive she thought, you never know what is going to happen next.

Translated Passage from The Days of Change

They finished their dinner and had a nice conversation.  It ended with sweet desserts and  him making her laugh.  That to him was even sweeter.  As they left the restaurant he noticed a young asian woman standing very close to the large shrubbery at the front of the building.  She was facing away from them and strangely close to the large bush that towered over her.  Her face was only a few inches away.  As the couple walked past he was perplexed as to what she was doing facing the bush and so close to it.  She looked like a child put in a corner facing away from the others. As soon as he thought this the woman he was walking with nodded at her and smiled saying, "She is on punishment"

He laughed and  as he walked by her he realized the asian woman was talking on a cell phone in hush tones.  She was obviously having a secret conversation with someone.  As they continued toward the parking lot the young woman became aware of them and inched even closer to the bush and whispered a  little quieter.

As they reached the car the he said, "Oh, she was just on the phone"

"Yeah, but it is more fun to think she is being punished right?  I wondered what she did?"
She smiled when she said this.

They got into the car and he started it up. "I don't know" he said.  " maybe she didn't finish all her dessert."

Tullin Sim translated from Swedish from the short story The Days of Change

The Snow In Japan (short passage part 1)

Toshiro came to an abrupt stop at the doorway.  He stood frozen for a long second considering the scene in front of him.  Victor was sitting on the living room chair and Keiko sat across from him on the sofa.  They both were leaning forward close to each other, bridging the space between them.  It was obvious from her red eyes and smeared makeup that she had been crying.  Victor held both of her hands in his own.  Toshiro's gaze fixed on their hands.  They way that Victor held both of her small hands in his, comforting her.  Toshiro wasn't sure what he had walked in on but at that moment he stopped thinking altogether and stepped forward into the room.

Victor saw him first out of the corner of his eye, or at least he saw the motion.  A blur, that took a second for his mind to realize was Toshiro.  Then it took him another second to drop Keiko's hands from his own and stand straight up.  Her hands dropped and knocked over his half empty beer bottle, the contents spilling out and pouring onto the floor.  Keiko instinctively reached out to right the bottle but before she could do so the whole table lurched forward and the bottle spun off and fell onto the floor with a clank.  Her drink now spilled over too and the ice cubes slid across the glass coffee table. She looked to her right and she realized that Toshiro had come into the room in quickly and he had bumped the table.  She also realized that the glass table was now the only thing between the two men. The only partition between Victor and Toshiro, was a small and fragile barrier unable to separate their hatred.

For a moment he looked at her. Toshiro's face showed a mixture of confusion, sadness, love and rage.  Seeing his face twist under the weight of this strange cocktail of emotions hurt her. She began crying again.  She started to say his name but only got the first consonant out when he silenced her by looking away suddenly. He turned toward Victor.  Both men standing - only separated by the two feet that the glass cover table occupied. Toshiro felt electric, he felt his body surge with energy every muscle twitched and shook.  His anger consumed him.  He didn't even see Victor as a man standing in front of him.  Instead he saw only an obstacle something that was preventing his happiness, something that was obstructing his desire, and something that needed to be destroyed.  He wasn't alone in this thinking.

  Victor stopped seeing Toshiro as well.  Toshiro faded away and was replaced by the living, breathing reason that Keiko had not chosen him, why she had rejected him.  He wanted her to leave Osaka to go with him, but on that night she had refused him.  She had started to explain why when Toshiro stormed in.  In seeing him he no longer needed her explanation.  He knew it was because she had made a choice.  This rejection swelled up inside him.  It was clear now that they wouldn't have a life together as he had imagined, as he had hoped for. This disappointment grew and turned from sadness to hatred in an instant. Hatred, that like a love for her, they both shared.

Time spun down and seemed to hang still and frozen for an instant.

And then the violence.

Toshiro put his right foot on the table and kicked it forward with all his might.  It's edge crashed directly into Victor's shinbone.  This hurt like hell and it also knocked him off balance.  He fell forward onto the coffee table with an audible thud.  By some miracle it did not break, for all of two seconds. Toshiro tried to kick Victor's head as he had fallen onto the table, but Victor threw himself back toward the chair and missed most of the kick at the last second.  Toshiro reached down and grabbed edge of the table.  He flung it to his right, away from Keiko and it shattered into a thousand little glass cubes. Now the only thing that had kept them apart disappeared.

Victor did not want to be in a ground fight with Toshiro, not if he could help it.  So he used the moment it took for Toshiro to fling the table to scramble to his feet.  Behind him was the chair and the room was small, he didn't have much room to move and he needed space. He knew that if Toshiro got his hands on him in close he was as good as thrown or tripped.  He knew first hand that Toshiro’s judo was just too good.  He had thrown him around like a rag doll the last time they had fought. Every time they had fought.  And once Toshiro got him down to the ground then the trouble would really start.    Victor knew he needed space to have a chance, and he knew how to get it.

Toshiro knew he just needed to get a hold of him.  He just needed to get his hands on him by the collar or by his belt.  If he could get ahold of him then he could throw him.  And once he threw him it was over.  Sure he knew first hand that Victor was tough, and he knew how to take a throw, but he also knew that the result of the throw or trip would be with Victor on the ground and with him on top.  And in that scenario it would just be a matter of time before he was able to work his jujitsu.  In that he was confident.  He just had to get ahold of him.  Toshiro knew what he had to do.  He rushed in.

Victor slid his left foot forward slightly, lifted his hands up and put his chin down.  He anticipated the rush.  It came as he expected.  Toshiro lunged at him, hoping to tie him up with his outstretched arms, but Victor was ready for it.  He snapped off a quick and hard jab that snapped Toshiro’s head back and followed it with another.  Victor wasn't sure if it was the first punch or the second that broke Toshiro’s nose.  It could have been either one as both were hard and hit flush.  Either way Toshiro's nose was running like someone had turned on a faucet.  Victor took advantage if the second that it took Toshiro to register what had happened, and sidestepped his charge to his right, circling Toshiro and keeping him at a distance.

Toshiro's stumbled forward as the sting from the two punches filled his eyes with water for a second.  Stupid- he thought to himself to rush in like that, with outstretched arms like the Frankenstein monster.  I was stupid and he made me pay for it.  He had an almost overwhelming urge to blow his nose and he knew that meant his nose was broken and if he did blow his nose it would fill his ocular cavity with blood and swell his eyes shut. I won't make that mistake again he thought, I just have to be patient and get in close.  He turned and faced Victor.

  Toshiro had rushed him and Victor had evaded him like a matador.  Good, Victor thought, bull rush me again and I will pick you apart.  The bulls die at the end.  Sometimes they get the matador, but usually they just die.  Victor thought about this as he circled out into the open space in the room.  He moved lightly on his feet as he moved about the room.  He thought -open space room to move and I will pick him apart.  Put him out on his feet or go to the ground on my terms with him on his back out cold.  I've got a chance. Fuck him he thought.  He didn't say anything out loud.

From the couch Keiko screamed.

Lycanthropy

Most of the time I am a regular guy

Sitting on the couch drinking beer

Soft as cookie dough

Sweet and squishy as a green colored gummy bear

But sometimes...

Sometimes there is a transformation

 I stand erect, tall

 I throw my shoulders back I turn my head side to side and hear my neck crack

Reaching out in front of me I squeeze my hands slowly into

 Fists

Feeling my skin tighten, the muscles in my arms stretch and strain

My sinews pop,

 I open my hands and my fingers feel longer

I turn my hands palm down and my hands slowly claw

 I lean forward 

My beard has grown longer, my hair is more unkempt

For a while I pace back and forth then I leave my heated house

I walk barefoot in the snow into the woods

I feel the cold on my feet

The pain is comforting 

My smile grows It twists into an all knowing I don't give a fuck grin

 A large smile, I bare my teeth

My breathing is like a snarl

I drink anger, I am drunk on it

 I stop planning, I stop thinking things out, I stop considering

 I piss on consequence

 I start living I am dangerous

 I hold the machete of reckless abandon in one hand I hold a glass bottle in the other

The bottle is full of the realization that this is the only life we have

I slough the liquid inside the bottle around and see that it is seeping out

I stop the bottle with an oily rag

Light it afire and I lick the flames

 I am a wilding 

I look up at the moon and I sing as loud as I can

 With a nod to the old man I scream "there is a wolf in my heart and sometimes he chews his way out"

But I am only like this sometimes....

And only for a little while

Then it's back to the couch ..........

Tullin Sim 1975

seen

I have seen pterodactyls swarm the primordial sky.  Soaring on giant reptilian wings

I have seen the moon set over the Panthalassa.  Waded in its warm waters.  Watched  ancient leviathans swimming near its shores.

I have seen men stand atop ziggurats, raise bloody hands , and pray to long forgotten gods

I have seen women run wild during the Bacchanalia on the Aventine Hill.  Throwing down any passing man and fuck them,  drunk on lust and wine.

I have seen archers rain down arrows from the towers so thick that they nearly blotted out the noonday sun.  And I have seen a man stand still and catch them in his hands.

I have seen great clipper ships with eighteen sails chart unknown waters.   I have heard the strange drums beat of distant shores.

I have seen giant airships catch fire on summer nights.  In an instant all the horrors of modernity laid bare.

I have seen the neon streets of Tokyo, the arcing of the lights, heard the screams of motorcycles tearing through a sea of humanity.

I have seen the last man on earth look up at the sun in loneliness and despair.  Heard his last words and his pitiful sigh.

I have seen intelligent machines in sterility create new organic life and  becomes gods themselves.

I have seen the last star fold in on itself, a shudder, then nothingness.

And of all these things I have seen…

You are the most amazing

Life

Whenever one is bored the best thing to do is; grab someones' hand, climb a fence, smash a bottle, go swimming, set something on fire, and drive much too fast. -Tullin Sim 1956