I LINKED to this column of mine months? years? ago. But I like it and it has probably vanished from the Asahi site by now. So here it is, preserved from company Webmasters:
It was a warm September day in Kyoto. The horrid summer sun that had baked the valley and turned thousands of tatami-clad apartments into hellholes was on the move—there were others to torment, elsewhere.
The teacher smiled and checked her watch as she watched her Nihongonauts splashing happily in the total immersion pool. As always, she tried to look stern, but her kindness gave her away—as always. She drifted away for a moment. Lamenting the losses, the teacher assured herself that she had done everything possible, that she had done the best she could. No one could see how the casualties wounded her. She wouldn’t let them.
One of her colleagues touched her on the sleeve. She blinked once, feeling the warmth of the concrete beneath her bare feet. He was pointing at the German Guy. He moved rapidly through the water like a machine. She looked away, finding his tiny Euro swimsuit distasteful, his arrogant precision simply dull. Yet, she admitted, he was by far the most accomplished student in class.
She preferred the Korean Girl. She circled the pool, beautiful in a vermilion suit. Her technique was enchanting. She had embraced the breaststroke. Somewhat of an anachronism, it gave her a courtly grace. She caused barely a ripple in the water, as if she feared even the slightest wave would call attention to her and be seen as rude. Her classmates smiled with affection as she slipped past. She whispered encouragement to everyone.
The teacher shook her head and laughed as the Malaysian Hottie in a silver bikini performed her splashy backstroke. The immersion pool was her stage and she was a star. She was unable to keep pace with the German, but she had an easy, at times carefree charisma that kept her classmates amused and—whoops, there was a bit of that carelessness in action—she rammed the German. He grunted and powered ahead; she laughed knowing it was the last day and all mistakes would be forgiven.
The teacher glanced at her watch. Only seven minutes to go and they could all climb out of the pool. She’d shoved the lot of them in six months before and all but two had survived. The victims had made it through the hiragana and katakana, but had wiped out on the kanji.
A laugh, and then another, rang out. The Chinese—the biggest group of students—were dog-paddling their way around the pool in a happy bunch. All had taken to kanji like ducks to water. But the katakana had gotten up their noses. They had found themselves battling a riptide of mangled English words.
Two minutes left, and for Big Walt, the American, the end couldn’t come too soon. The size of three little salarymen or two larger ones, he was clinging to the edge of the pool counting down the seconds until graduation.
The teacher knew Big Walt was no dummy. He was a computer programming genius, but as soon as she’d tossed him into the pool he’d clammed up. His voice was so soft; she wasn’t ever really sure what he was saying. Once in a while she’d been able to coax him into deeper water but not often. His only consolation was that he wasn’t the worst swimmer in the immersion pool. That soggy honor belonged to the other American.
The teacher looked around for her last remaining student. He talked too much to ever really learn what she had to teach. She liked him anyway. He was funny and had a knack of keeping the best swimmers from intimidating the others.
Counterintuitively, if not surprising, he could say pretty much anything he wanted. But when the pool spoke in return, he was completely out of his depth. The ability to ask a question was of little value if you couldn’t understand the answer.
At last the teacher spotted her 71 percent, barely-passed-the-course American. She leaped into the water. He was unmoving, sinking to the bottom. A strong swimmer—it was her pool after all—she grabbed him by his baggy surfer trunks and dragged him up from the depths. Other teachers pulled him out of the water.
“He’s not breathing,” Big Walt said, the emergency elevating his voice into the audible range. “Somebody do something.” He pulled himself out of the pool and began pounding on his friend’s chest.
“Stop!” the teacher shouted, “You’ll beat him to death.”
She knelt next to her most incoherent student and gently pried his language-challenged jaws open. Her lips touched his. His eyes flew open. He winked—he laughed—he said: “Finally”—all in perfect Japanese.
