On the Bridge

It’s late one night and my girlfriend and I are on our way home. I’m riding my pushbike with her sitting side-saddle on the back, weaving through the gentle streets of Kyoto.

            We’re approaching one of the footbridges over the Hasegawa, a little stream that runs through the entertainment area of Kiyamachi. Ahead of us one of the ladies of the night is sitting on the low railing of the bridge holding an unlit cigarette in one hand and a lighter in the other.  

            The woman turns towards us and lights the cigarette, illuminating a face as haggard as any I've ever seen. Her skin is thin and translucent with shades of blue, pink and milky grey beneath the snow-white puff-powder surface. One of her top teeth is missing, the others are yellow and crooked. Her hair is as black as pitch and her lips are as red as a red, red rag.

            She draws hard on the cigarette, pulls it away from her mouth and takes in more air. She lets a curl of blue smoke escape and it drifts up and away into the branches of a wild cherry tree. Then she blows the rest of the smoke in a long thick stream across our path so that we have to cut through it as we pass across the bridge. 

            Yuko doesn’t say a word for a while after this and I wonder if she's seen the woman at all. But then, in a voice almost too quiet for me to hear, she whispers, "I wish her day would come."

 © Owen Smith,  1995

The above story was compiled soon after the incident happened a few years ago. Please find, however, a recent updated (the name of the river was not correct) and re-written version below.

ON THE BRIDGE

We're weaving through the maze on my street bike, heading east through the dark and silent backstreets of The Old Capital. My girlfriend Yuko is, as usual, sitting side-saddle on the cargo frame behind me, 'riding shotgun' as we call it. She's returning from working tables in a noisy restaurant-bar in Osaka and I'd just picked her up from the station. Weary as we ride home, she alternates between anecdotes of her co-workers' antics in the restaurant kitchen and unresponsive half-sleep, even as she continues to ease her weight from left to right as needed. Yuko's English is easy and confident, if embellished with the occasional endearing faux pas, often phrases interpreted directly from the Japanese that somehow work better than the correct and clinical English. 

         There's a softness to the night as we coast past burnt-timber walls, ornamental trees and plants in pots lining the luminous streets. The tiny shopfronts shuttered and grey in the low light of the streetlamps, the sweet smell of incense drifting from household shrines dedicated to ancestors past, the aroma of simmering ramen, the stench of a ripe rubbish bin, cats in an ally.

         Assaulting the sensibilities in a different way a bank of the ubiquitous, glaring vending machines stand like sentinels at the gates of a local temple. Offering Coca Cola, Calpis and Pokari Sweat, or anything from candy to beer, they are convenience at your fingertips. There's an order here, a feeling of security and such a sense of stillness that you wonder if there are any actual people inside the huddled houses.

         I follow a well-worn path south of Shijo-street - avoiding the broiling entertainment district known as Kiyamachi - to connect with a bridge over the Kamogawa river. After years of riding it, the way is familiar to me. Like the recitation of a mantra or the lyrics of a song there's a rhythm and a rhyme to the movement, and the tyres on the road sing a riding tune. The click and clunk of the chain sliding onto another gear, a slight extra pressure on the pedals, a touch of the brakes. 

         We're approaching one of the footbridges over the little stream running parallel to the river where, ahead of us, one of the ladies of the night is sitting on the low railing. She holds an unlit cigarette in one hand and a lighter in the other, a heavy-looking shoulder bag at her feet. With her legs crossed and her back slack and bowed she displays the demeaner of one defeated, beaten.

         The woman turns towards us and, as we draw near, brings the cigarette to her mouth and lights it, illuminating a face as haggard as any I'd ever seen. Her skin is thin and translucent, shades of blue, pink and milky grey beneath a snow-white puff-powder surface. One of her top teeth is missing, the others yellow and crooked. Her hair is blacker than the night and her lips are as red as a red, red rag.

         She draws hard on the cigarette, then instantly pulls it away from her mouth, allowing thin curls of blue smoke to drift up and away into the bare branches of a wild cherry tree. Then she blows the rest of the smoke in a long thick stream across our path so that we must cut through it as we pass in front of her and cross the little bridge. 

         As we ride on, the tableau of the woman, the image of her face, the black, the red, the blue smoke, her pale skin, the firelight in the darkness, are all seared in my mind, unshakable.

         Yuko doesn’t say a word for a while after this and I wonder if she'd seen the woman at all, her vision impaired by the rider in front of her. But then, in a voice almost too quiet for me to hear she whispers, "I wish her day would come."

© Owen Smith 2024