The Vanishing Foreigner, Part 4

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

One day a week he had to make a train ride to a company that was fifty minutes each way and he'd gotten into the habit of doing the Japan Times crossword puzzle during the trip. He'd bought a mechanical pencil with an eraser for this purpose, but the lead it came with was too hard to write well on newspaper. He'd been meaning to buy a softer lead for some time but kept forgetting, and when he saw the convenience store on the corner just inside the arcade, he was pleased to have an honorable excuse to go inside and buy one. Danny ducked inside and to kill enough time for the boys to get bored and leave, engaged the cashier in conversation.

"Excuse me, but could you help me?" he said. She gave him a hesitant nod and he went on. "I have a mechanical pencil and I want to buy a..." He didn't know the word for lead and began to think how to rephrase his request. "I have a mechanical pencil but I can't use it. I don't know the word for what I want. It is like ink but not liquid... You put it inside."

"Ball pen?" she asked.

"No, not a ball pen. A mechanical pencil. I want the round thing in the center of a pencil. It's hard like metal and works like ink in a mechanical pencil."

"You want a pencil?"

"No. Not a pencil, not a ball point pen. You put it inside a mechanical pencil in order to write." There was a cup next to the register with a few pencils and pens in it. He grabbed a pencil from it and pointed to the lead. "Like this."

"You want a pencil?"

"No no no. May I have a sheet of paper?" he said and gestured as if he were writing. Her expression remained blank and she didn't move so he opened his wallet and took out a scrap of paper. He made a squiggle then jabbed a circle around it. "This is not ink, but this is what I want... for a mechanical pen."

All the time they'd been talking Danny was acutely aware she was staring at his hair and biting her lower lip as if to keep herself from giggling. Beads of sweat had begun to trickle down his neck and his scalp felt as if every hair was trying to wriggling free by the root. The boys were still circling outside on their bicycles waiting for him. He had hoped to outlast them, but his patience was dangerously close to the breaking point. Suddenly he remembered the donut shop nearby - he could wait them out there, over a bottomless cup of coffee. He walked over to the pen and pencil display and brought back two packs of pencil leads. He laid them on the counter and said, "Which one is softer?"

Her face lit up in a smile. "I got it!" she laughed.

"You want shin!"

"Shin is it? Great!"

"Do you want them both?"

"Only the softer one. Sorry, but I can't read Japanese."

She picked one up and began reading the back. She began to squint and after a while turned it over, read the front, turned to the back again and read some more. After a while she picked up the other one and did the same. Danny folded his arms in front and stood watching her. He was about to say something insulting when she said, "Maybe this one."

"Maybe?"

"Soft, right? This one. One hundred and eighty nine yen."

"Lemme see those," he said and took them from her. The two packages appeared to be identical except one had a prominent H and the other HB. "What's the difference between H and HB?"

"This one," she said and pointed. "This one is softer."

She had been dealing with him like a child ever since he walked in and all of her actions indicated she didn't know a thing about pencil leads nor cared whether he got what he wanted. It didn't seem as if she were willing to even try to understand him; all she wanted now was to get him out the door. Since it wasn't worth the effort to get to the bottom of which pack of leads he needed and it was an insignificant amount of money, he decided to buy them both.

"Another battle lost that should have never been fought," he said in English, then in Japanese that he'd buy them both.

Her forehead wrinkled and she tilted her head to the side. Without a word she rang it up on the register then reached under the counter and pulled out a calculator. She typed in the amount he owed and with both hands held it at shoulder height for him to read. This had never happened to him before and the effect was catastrophic.

He was thinking of the injustice of having just explained to her in Japanese what he wanted, and finally after being able to make himself clear, she ignored that he was capable of communicating. Was she trying to insult him, or had she written him off as incompetent the moment he entered? What other reason could there be? After all, the numbers the Japanese use for prices are so simple an idiot could learn how to count past a million within minutes.

He rolled his eyes, and when he did, something inside of him gave way and the great empirical foundation of knowledge that filters what we allow ourselves to see presented itself. He became aware of a steadily intensifying electric hum and a monolith rose before him and hovered. Shafts of heat began racing up his spine and it felt as if opposing forces had gripped it at both ends and were slowly twisting it back and forth. When he realized what the monolith represented, it fissured and crumbled like a block of ice, hanging for a second before dropping from view. The room went red and his spine suddenly twisted as if it were being wrung like a damp towel. The air was pressing in from all sides and just when he thought he could bear it no more, Danny imploded with a POOF! and disappeared.

She stood staring at the empty space where he had been standing just moments before. A cloud of fine, sparkling dust still hung in the air and when the last golden cinder traced its way to the growing mound on the floor, she said Waaa Bikkurishita!

A group of customers came in and once she had dealt with them she called her manager. He didn't know what to make of her story, but told her to close the shop and called the police.

When the police arrived they had her go over her story many times and each version was remarkably similar: a red headed foreigner who couldn't speak Japanese bought two packs of pencil leads. When he was shown the amount on a calculator he disappeared in a cloud of fairy dust, "like Tinkerbell".

Police hear all kinds of stories and figured that this one was a particularly well executed prank. Nevertheless, they kept their composure throughout the investigation and even took samples of the "fairy dust" scattered across the floor. Before they left a detective instructed the manager and cashier to keep quiet and he'd get back to them when they knew more, but it was too late: she had filled her time waiting by calling her friends and telling them the news.

Word quickly spread about the vanishing foreigner and for a brief time business was brisk at the store. However, when another rumor began that a ghost roamed the aisles and followed people home, even their steady customers began to shun the store and it eventually went out of business and was torn down.

Within a year of Danny's death the story about the foreigner who disappears when shown a calculator had fanned out among shopkeepers and clerks all over the country. As a result, nowadays few cashiers know the reason for doing so, but as a matter of form show foreigners the amount they owe on a calculator regardless of their ability to express themselves in Japanese. No harm nor slight is intended; indeed, there are those who do it out of a wish to be polite and are genuinely confused to find themselves the sudden focus of a foreigner's wrath.

There are those that claim Danny's spirit still roams Hiroshima and lingers about cash registers waiting to possess any foreign resident in a particularly bad mood. If you find yourself becoming inexplicably upset during a transaction someday and counting to ten just won't do, follow these steps: stand back, close your eyes and repeat Watashi wa kienai ("I will not disappear") three times to defuse the situation. After paying your bill and thanking your cashier, leave promptly but not too fast. Do not forget your change. Do not look back.

Rick Nelson grew up in Oklahoma and has lived in Japan for all but a few of the last 27 years. His mother was a librarian and professional storyteller and was instrumental in developing his interest in literature and writing. Hiroshima inspires him and he currently divides time between Hiroshima city and Shikoku.

The thumbnail image used for this piece is from Wikimedia Commons and kindly released by AMagill under a Creative Commons cc-by-2.0 license.