Yet that was where I met her as I was waiting for the train to Kyoto. She was standing calm and quiet on the platform wrapped in a heavy black coat, which white specks of snow dappled as if on some exquisite work of finery. Some also clung to her hair, but she seemed to pay those specks of snow no mind. She only stood there, calm and quiet, as trains pulled up to the platform, one after another, and people, crowd by crowd, emerged from the trains. Her right hand held a black lunch box and her eyes were fixed ahead of her. When I saw her, I decided not to take my train but to stay and observe her instead. Which train was she going to take? To what station? Such were the questions I pondered and for which I awaited the answers . . . But she left without boarding any train at all. She stood stock-still on the platform for about an hour or so before turning around, going down the steps, and disappearing into the white glare of the snowstorm.
Every day afterwards, I would find her there. Although that first snowstorm had spent its fury, leaving only thin flurries behind, she still came to the platform each morning, her right hand holding the same black lunchbox and her eyes fixed ahead of her, though what they held in their gaze was still unclear to me. Not a single train drew her aboard, and she would pass another hour or so on the platform before walking down the stairs again and out of my sight.
After she had disappeared on that first morning, I immediately took the following train, nothing else revolving in my mind but the desire to know: What was inside that black lunchbox of hers? Was it actually food, or something else? At what mark did she aim her sight—at something everyone else could see, or some other vision? So from my seat on the train I pondered these mysteries—as, for the entire time that she had stood calm and quiet on the platform, I could think of nothing other than her beauty. It eventually became my sole source of warmth in that frozen country. Her appearance on the platform each day was like the sun’s ascent into the sky, her departure like its setting—a coming and going also as mundane as the sun’s, except it took place within a single hour, an exceedingly short time, but for me too lovely to describe.
*
Snow is a peculiar thing. When it falls, we perceive at first its beauty, its cruelty only afterward: the sting of it inside the nose, the ache of it against the skin. Although we want to stand and savor the moment in peace, breathing in its crisp, clear smell, a chill nips at our noses before any scent can enter, our skin reddens and goes raw before before any pleasure arises. Blood runs from our nostrils; our skin is raised and chapped.
And if snow is a strange thing, then a snow country must be stranger still. I arrived in this land of snow at the beginning of winter. On the day they started taking applicants for work training in Japan, I never imagined it would be a place spread so deeply with snow. For me, Japan had been a land populated by ultra-men and the pocket-sized monsters of my youth, and a place inhabited by the adult celebrities of my teenage years, but never of snow—I never imagined a snow country when I submitted my application that day.
The qualification exams went by successfully, and I was to go to Sendai. I had never heard of it before; why couldn’t it be Tokyo, Kyoto, or Osaka? Why not a city full of pretty young women with fair, delicate features, of temples or vast and ancient palaces?—instead of a city frozen beneath the white gleam of snow. It was with this that Sendai introduced itself to me on our first meeting. When I emerged from the airport, snowflakes were drifting through the air like so many wisps of cotton. I stood waiting for taxis, which were in short supply, for about half an hour, my ears growing slowly numb in the cold, and if someone had snapped them off, I surely wouldn’t have noticed one bit. My nostrils hurt and I had difficulty breathing. Not having packed the appropriate clothes, I was wearing only a shirt with a single suit jacket over it, and I felt as if the cold were gnawing into my bones. At first I kept brushing at the snowflakes that were collecting on my face but then gave up and let them accumulate as they would. A taxi finally came; I shoved myself into the back seat and extended the business card that I had crumpled inside a shivering hand to the driver, who wore spotless white gloves. He glanced at it before nodding once and driving off without a word.
And how lonely this land of snow turned out to be! In the mornings, before it was light out, I would walk to work before trudging back to my lodgings again once darkness had overtaken the evening. From then on I would sit at the window and watch the snow fall. There was no excitement at all in this, no entertainment. Sendai was a city quiet beneath the snow’s white gleam, cold and still and drained of other colors. And so life went by, before I met her at the train station on the day I was bound for Kyoto, when she appeared with lunchbox in hand like a warm ray of sun, sweet and mellow, and made me feel as if the cold that had persisted for so long was ending at last.
For this reason, I started going to the train station every morning instead of heading directly to work. Even on days I didn’t have to travel, I would go; I would stand and wait for her on the platform, wait for her to appear and the flakes of snow to start falling, then wait for them to settle on her clothes. The cold was no longer something I feared but rather that she wouldn't arrive before I had to leave for work. Five minutes, ten minutes, thirty minutes, one hour—how many times I would look down at my watch, my breath catching at times until she came. Then my condition would return to normal, once she arrived in her heavy coat, with the lunchbox she always carried, bringing quiet and calm with her—she for whom I waited.
*
I would be in Japan for only a year, yet making no attempt to engage with the products of Japanese civilization—its arts and literature, among other things—seemed to me to indicate a lack of sensitivity. I started by going to various art exhibits in different cities and buying the books of famous Japanese authors. I began learning how to appreciate the woodblock prints of Hokusai; I was stunned by the wood engravings of Yanagi, entranced by the writings of Kawabata, especially by his Snow Country, was thrilled by the erotic imagination of Tanizaki; and heartened by Mishima’s patriotism. Every weekend I went to galleries and bookstores in different cities and purchased the works of these artists and writers, print by print and volume by volume. In my room I began having to make space for these things of high culture, which made it feel warmer, at least in my mind.
Among these artifacts were two items I treasured over all the rest. The first was a copy of a woodblock print called “A Walk in the Snow” by Kawase Hasui. The image was not very big, but what it portrayed drew me in immediately: in the print we can see a woman carrying a child on her back and walking against the falling snow with a light wooden parasol. There is a dog following quietly at her heels. I would gaze, absorbed by the image, time and again, taking pleasure in wondering where the woman in the picture is headed: whether she is leaving or returning home; what age the child is on her back; if she feels the cold surrounding her; whether the dog came with her or met her only by chance, and why it decided to follow her through the snowy night. The possibilities seeped into my imagination, nourishing it like a constant spring gushing from deep underground.
The other item I cherished above the others was a short story, “The Greeting” by Akutagawa Ryunosuke. It begins with a young man who meets a woman he admires on a railway platform. He sees her there every day, admires her every day, and contemplates greeting her every day as well, but never does. He is more lost in his desire to greet his image of her than her real self; he is more enamored with the words he would speak to her than with really giving them voice. Time passes amid the impressive claustrophobia of such a short tale until he finally decides he must say something to her, but the girl in question walks past him as if he were thin air. He greets instead a great emptiness, a train roaring as it leaves the station.
I began wondering how “The Greeting” would start if I had written it . . . I would probably start with a day of heavy snow, with great clouds of it billowing from the sky, and with a young lady waiting on a railway platform, but no matter how many trains arrive, she does not board a single one. On that same platform a man sits, observing her in silence, and does nothing else—there is no exchange of words, no greeting, between the two, only silence and watchfulness. That being the case, my story should be called “The Attraction” or “The Infatuation” rather than “The Greeting.” If her appearance alone is the culmination of his hopes, and that she continues appearing of his desires, then the story would need no dialogue—it would only need to tell of the tumult inside his heart and the quiet satisfaction of his reverie.
I thought often about writing this story as I waited for her on the platform. Actually, I should have bought a notebook and pens and used that time to do it, but I never did; I desired nothing of her in writing, only to cherish the memories I had of her in my mind. Those memories could not be contained in any space, I knew, but would drift through the open air, and out of that expanse I could reach and grab one whenever I needed to. In any case, although I bought no pen and paper, I got myself a black lunchbox like hers. I didn’t know what she kept in it, but in mine I stored all manner of important things: my business cards, cell phone, credit cards, date book, ink pad, and stamper, and even the little amulets and Buddha images I had worn from Thailand. If any visitor to the station were observant enough, they would have seen a young woman standing, calm and quiet, as if waiting for a train, with black lunch box in hand, and a young man sitting on a wooden bench with an identical one and gazing in her direction.
*
They say that, on the long road of life, we will either be nudged forward or pushed away from certain people, and that this will happen when we least expect it. So the two of us would probably have remained, a living photograph, had something not occurred. One morning it snowed heavily again, even though we were approaching the end of winter. No one had anticipated the arrival of snow that day; the television had called for clear skies and warm sunshine, and the newspapers were announcing that the time had come to pack away our coats at last. But suddenly over the station the sky darkened and great gusts of snow came driving toward the ground. I stood up from my bench and began pacing for warmth. Meanwhile, as she turned to look up at the sky, the first specks of snow settling on her coat, the woman was transformed for a moment into a lone tree standing on the platform in solitude. Then the most recent arrivals at the station poured forth from the latest train—across the platform they bustled to get out of the blowing snow, and quickly her body was swallowed up by the crowd.
I pushed my way towards her and, amid that great surge of humanity, found her lying on the ground, the lunchbox that she always carried kicked away from her by the rush of feet. At last it opened, revealing a white powder inside. She struggled to prop herself up on her elbows, looking first at it and then at me. My own feet could not move as I willed them to; at that moment it seemed as if every person on earth were disembarking on that platform, and though I fought my way to the lunchbox at last, it was too late: the white powder inside had dispersed, becoming one with the pouring snow.
Nearly ten minutes passed before the crowds vanished, and many more before she finally found the strength to rise to her feet. I let her lean lightly on me before handing the empty lunchbox to her. Her face had grown pale and wan as the snow, and she took the lunchbox from my hands and turned to walk away, as she always did, without saying a word. This time, however, I did not let her leave by herself, but followed quietly in her steps until she entered a small café not far from the station. I decided to go inside and take a seat across from her. The first words out of my mouth were, “I’m sorry I couldn’t maintain the original state of your lunchbox.” The second was, “Everything inside disappeared with the snow.” The first sentence was exceedingly appropriate to say, but the second I regretted immediately. The woman smiled weakly as a waitress set two glasses of water before us.
“Inside were the ashes of the man I love. For a long time I waited for the snow to come so that I could mix them together as one flesh, but I could never do it.” She paused to catch her breath, then without asking me turned to order two cups of coffee before staring at the lunchbox again. “My name is Yuki, the same yuki that means ‘snow,’ and for this reason I believed I ought to mix the two together as one body. Funny, isn’t it? I made my way all the way here, rented a hotel, and waited for snowfall. At first I thought if I had been named Kawa, ‘river,’ or Gata, ‘mountain,’ how much easier scattering these remnants would be. But that was before I realized the truth: no matter the location, letting go of what I have left of him is impossible.”
She sipped the hot coffee that had been set before us, but I paid my cup no mind. I knew precisely why I had come—it was her conversation I needed, not coffee at all. “On the day of that first snowstorm, I opened the lid to the lunchbox and made ready to fling it as hard as I could. But the muscles in my hand didn’t work; I didn’t have the least bit of strength, not even to raise the lunchbox any higher than I already had. I stood there, defeated, disappointed in myself, and let the truth sink in: until at last the snow stopped. This condition came over me time and again—of having no strength to say goodbye, or so I called it. By no means could I let these last traces of him go. My memories of him pressed down on my muscles, on my heart, my brain, and into the depths of my consciousness. Even though I knew he had to go—that in fact he was already gone—in the end, I could not bear losing my final link to him.” She looked down at the lunch box again. “Thanks to everything that happened this morning, I’ve finally been released.”
I handed my cup of coffee to her; it looked certain that one would not be enough. “May I ask you one question?” She nodded in response.
“Do you really feel like you’ve been set free? Have the feelings within you truly been released? It’s true—the ashes of your lover are gone, but that wasn’t by your own volition. Shrugging your shoulders and saying that everything is over might ease some emotions, but how can you be sure they won’t return? Excuse me if I have spoken out of place, but I really feel this way.” She stared at me for a long while, and in that space of time, I felt that several trains had come and gone.
“It’s too late,” she said softly at last. “There are no ashes, will be no snowstorms, any more.” I looked at my watch. “Right now, it’s eight o’clock. If we go back to the station, the train to Morioka will be there soon. The storm must have blown north and will get there by evening. There are still traces of your lover’s ashes along the sides of the box. Not enough to scatter, but you can catch the falling snow until the box is full and empty them out together.”
I got up, left several bills on the table, and reached a hand out to her. So I decided. If I had written a short story about an encounter and a greeting on a train platform, this is how it ought to end: with more than an exchanging of words and parting of ways—with something more and greater than both. She stood up as well, taking my hand lightly in hers. I brushed the snowflakes off her coat before the two of us made our way towards the station together. Outside, the storm had stopped, leaving only snowfall melting on the ground. The two of us strode through it, our footprints soon to melt without a trace.
