the brothers crow

In the Japanese educational system, it is customary for teachers and staff to be transferred to different schools within the prefecture at the beginning of every April. I am not sure what criterion is used to determine which teachers are transferred and, from what I have seen, most Japanese teachers aren’t sure either. The initial announcements are made one week prior to the 31st, and the final confirmation is given on the 31st. And though I could have asked earlier which teachers were leaving, I didn’t bother.

You see, some things can be understood without words.

When I looked around the office on Friday and finally realized that some desks were far cleaner than others, I understood without asking. True, it was a time for rest and reorganization, but some desks looked markedly different than others.

Some desks looked gutted. My own, I admit, was barren. I had cleaned it last Thursday, taking time to toss out all but the most essential, most useful of materials and documents. It was refreshing to do this, and it was as if I was reordering the past in my mind as I cleared the cobwebs out of my drawers.

This other cleaning was anything but therapeutic. It was erasure, a purging of memory and emotion. Already I found it difficult to remember exactly what my coworkers had placed on their desks. I couldn’t remember what photos and charms had once told me what little I knew of their private lives.

Tomorrow they will be gone. Fresh faces, unheard stories, and new memories will come and replace them. The lingering feeling of something lost might fade with time, but I know there will still be moments when I think of the wrong name, or imagine a different face.

—

When I first arrived many months ago, my desk was clean. Teaching materials were organized and essential documents were lying on my desk, along with a perfunctory note from my predecessor. Pens here, paper here, goodbye and good luck. I didn’t know him and I never would—at least that’s what I thought. But, in time, he became like an unvoiced character in a play, a person the audience comes to know through the traces they discover.

There were the notes he meant to leave behind, the polite ones which offered advice and aid. I learned how to fill out the order form for lunch delivery. I deciphered the impenetrable Japanese on various cleaning fluids thanks to him and came to understand which chemical was for what surface. He made living easier.

And then there were the notes he didn’t mean to leave behind. It was an accident, an unintentional disclosure at first. He left me a small pile of scratch paper, which he had made from extra copies of handouts and printed materials. One day I flipped over a paper instead of writing on the blank side.

I was thrust halfway into a letter he had written his parents. He was angry, defiant, and almost petulant in his words. He demanded understanding, freedom and approval. He was emotional, stumbling from one disconnected point to another. He didn’t know what he wanted, but he argued for it all the same.

I was immediately ashamed for reading it. Even so (or perhaps because of that), I could never forget it.

The second time was a note he wrote to himself, found as a bookmark in a frayed textbook. There was no anger here, only frustration and despair. Everything was wrong, nothing was right. He wanted to run away, but he had nowhere to go. He begged god for the strength to carry on, for the fortitude to steel his heart against the slow-burning hopelessness. I felt even more ashamed for reading this note, as it was far more personal. I was treading on this man’s sanctuary, his deepest thoughts. Maybe even his dreams.

Time wore on, but his traces kept surfacing. There are still collections of photographs on this very laptop. I am reluctant to look, but I can’t bring myself to delete them. From conversations here and there, I pieced together what relationships he built. Sometimes the stories were clear, other times it was merely a word or muttered phrase. Sometimes it was even less than that; it was amazing how much meaning I came to discern in a gesture or shift in tone.

I’ve seen only two pictures of his face, one from when he arrived and one from before he left. In the first, he’s wearing a collared shirt. His desk is a mess, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He doesn’t smile with his teeth, but it touches his eyes just enough to prove genuine. Those eyes, a deep blue, are a sharp contrast to his sandy blonde hair, which is cropped close at the bottom but a touch longer at the top. It all betrays his youth, as well as an earnest desire to impress.

In the second, his face seems longer and paler. The color has started to leave his skin and lips, and the wrinkles are more pronounced. His hair is tussled and uncombed, and his hairline looks to be receding. His smile is the same, but his eyes are different—no slight squint, only a stare that doesn’t match his mouth. My first thought was that he’s tired. He’s so very tired.

I’ve never met him in person and have never even heard his voice. I don’t know him, yet I feel like I know him intimately. I know it’s an illusion in many ways, but I can’t shake the image of this person that’s been constructed in my mind. It makes me wonder if he felt the same way about his predecessor. Were there enough jotted notes and forgotten letters to speak for him? Did people tell him stories between words like they told me?

When I read his writing, I felt a desire above all else to be heard. He wanted someone to hear him, to listen to him, to know him. On some level, I question whether it was an accident or an intentional oversight to leave these traces behind.

I can almost imagine his hand pausing, hesitating as it hovers over an old cathartic confession. Maybe he wants it to be found and read, thinking it could help by serving as a warning of what could happen if his successor isolates himself. Or maybe he’s just tired of not being heard.

Well, wherever you are C.C., I hear you. I hear you very well.