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The other night, I was working late at the computer. The wife was also up, working in the kitchen, preparing lunch for the following day's sports festival at son's school. I was working on a cover letter and essay for a job application in Japan but, as is my usual lately, spending a lot of time on YouTube listening to and watching music videos, indulging in a bit of nostalgia for bands I used to love at university (Jane's Addiction and Red Hot Chili Peppers, for example).
When I type, I sometimes chew on my fingernails to think. It's a bad habit. That's when I noticed the smell. I couldn't place it, but it was something between old compost and dog crap. I sniffed closer. Yes, it was there, but I couldn't be sure it was on my fingers. I couldn't remember having handled anything remotely strange during the day, and I hadn't sat on the pot either, so there was no chance I had slipped with the toilet paper. I ignored it, and went back to writing about harmony-preserving strategies of Japanese conversationalists while "Three Days" played.
The smell returned. I knew it couldn't be my fingers. Maybe it was something the wife was cooking? I went to the kitchen. It was about midnight at this point, and she was standing at the counter, cutting vegetables. A couple of pots simmered on the stove. I checked how she was doing, surreptiously peering into the pots to see if they were the source of the odd odor. Nothing there except some quails eggs and daikon; nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe it was my imagination. Maybe it was time to take out the food garbage. Maybe something was rotting in the sink trap. I decided to ignore it and get back to work.
The smell was pervasive, though. There used to be a small take-away shop in the building below us, and in the summer, the smell of oil grease would sometimes rise to the apartment. But this smell wasn't that, and it only seemed to be noticeable when my hand came near my face. It worried me. Maybe some sick, stray dog had let one go outside below the window?
Completely distracted by this point, and worried that I had, without my knowledge, somehow gotten garbage or human waste on my fingers, I was my hands twice.
Sitting down at the computer afterward, the wife comes into the room, a bowl and spoon in one hand, a worried look on her face, asking me to try the new dish she's been working on all day, a dish involving bamboo shoots, walnuts, rice, potatoes, and pork.
"Sure, no problem," I said, reaching for the spoon. As soon as the food neared my nose, I knew the source of that stink.
Now, I don't know where you were born or how you were raised, but I grew up poor in America, and I was raised to never, ever criticize someone's cooking, no matter how bad it is. I pushed my wife's dish past my uncooperative lips and began to chew.
Initially, there was no taste. Then it rose, from the back of my taste buds, subtle but oh-so-there: a taste to match the smell, not rancid, not disgusting, but unpleasant all the same. I chewed thoughtfully, my wife's anxious face watching me.
I thought I could get the lie out, and said, "It tastes good," but as I did so, my own face betrayed me and I started chuckle out of nervousness.
The wife's face broke into a smile. "I thought so," she said.
"No, it's not that bad."
"It smells terrible."
I paused before admitting: "I was wondering where that smell came from. It's...interesting."
At that, we both broke out in laughter. It was like we both had been smoking pot--something she has never done--and had launched into a giggle-fit: we couldn't stop, we couldn't breathe at times, we sat there, tears in our eyes, that smell pervading our nostrils. It took us about five minutes to calm down enough to talk again. She was, of course, distraught.
"I worked so hard on this. I have to throw it away."
"No," I said, "don't. Just put some lemon juice or seasoning in it. The taste really isn't so bad. It's just the smell." Just uttering the word "smell," though, sent us both back into the grips of giggle-fits. For the rest of the night and the next morning, anytime we would mention that "smell," we would start laughing again. It was, we knew, our private joke, and I urged her not to warn her parents or son about the smell; just let them eat it and decide for themselves.
It was a time, we knew, that we would remember, a private memory between the two of us, a reason to be happy about being married, sharing a life, sharing memories, a time of silliness and release amidst all the stress and bad times we've been having. It was a smell to remember.
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