Toshikazu Kawaguchi - Tales from the Café

Yukio remembered Kinuyo.

As a child, he had as many as three brushes with death. On each of these occasions Kinuyo was by his side.

The first time was when he was two. A bout of pneumonia had given him a fever of nearly forty degrees and a persistent cough. Nowadays, pneumonia is no longer difficult to recover from. Thanks to medical advances, there are now effective antibiotics that will knock it on the head. Today, it is common medical knowledge that the main causes of pneumonia for young children are bacteria, viruses, and mycoplasma, and there are clear methods of treatment for each.

Back then, however, it was not uncommon for a doctor to simply say, ‘There is nothing else I can do. Now it’s up to your son.’ In Yukio’s case, they didn’t know that his pneumonia was bacterial, and when his high fever and severe coughing continued, the doctor said, ‘Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.’

The second time he almost drowned. He had been playing at the river’s edge when he was seven. Miraculously, on that occasion, he was revived after both his breathing and heart had stopped. The person who found him had fortuitously worked for the local fire and ambulance station and had the ability to administer life-saving CPR immediately. Kinuyo had been at the river with him, but it all happened in a second she had taken her eyes off him.

The third time was a road accident when he was ten. While riding his brand-new bike, he was rammed by a car that had ignored the traffic lights. The impact sent him flying right in front of Kinuyo’s eyes. He was thrown almost ten metres and had to be carted off in an ambulance with multiple injuries to his whole body. He was on the brink of death but luckily his head was unscathed, and he miraculously regained consciousness.

Parents can’t prevent their child getting ill, being injured, or having an accident. On all three occasions, Kinuyo nursed him without sleep or rest until he recovered. Apart from toilet breaks, she never left his side, holding his hand in both of hers as if she were praying. Her husband and parents were worried that she would burn herself out and urged her to rest, but she wouldn’t listen. A parent’s love for their child is bottomless. Their children remain children, no matter how old they grow. For Kinuyo, that feeling never changed, even when Yukio left home on his quest to become a celebrated potter.

He had become an apprentice to that famous potter. He received free food and board at the potter’s house, but it was agreed that he would work without pay. So, after spending the day at the pottery studio, he would earn some money by working at a convenience store, or places like an izakaya bar at night. He could easily cope with that kind of lifestyle in his twenties, but in his thirties it became physically gruelling. He started receiving a small wage from the pottery studio, but, unable to stand sharing a room for ever, he rented an apartment, which immediately made life much harder.

Despite all this, he always put a little away so that he might own his own pottery studio in the future. Kinuyo would occasionally send a box of instant foods along with a letter, and this helped supplement his meals.

Some weeks he had as little as one thousand yen to spend. Everyone else his age had a proper job and was doing things that adults did, like falling in love and buying new cars. But Yukio was in front of the kiln getting covered in smoke and soot. He would knead his clay and dream of the day when he would be an acclaimed potter with his own studio.

There were many times when he felt like giving up, filled with doubt about his talent. He was in his thirties and couldn’t see how he could go on working in casual jobs. If he wanted to find something decent, he had better quit soon – in this difficult job climate, no company was going to hire him after forty. Even now, he would find it hard. How much longer could he go on like this?

How long would it take him to become a successful potter with his own studio? He felt uneasy about how uncertain his future was. His was a life with no guarantees. With marriage out of the question, each day for him was a battle with the clay.

Yet he still clung to that thin strand of hope that he would fulfil his dream and make his mother proud. As long as he felt that there was someone who would find joy in his success, that was enough for him. Even if he was mocked and laughed at by society, at least he knew that Kinuyo believed in his success.

But… never in his worst nightmare had he imagined being swindled out of every penny and then falling into massive debt.

The news of Kinuyo’s death reached him when he was at his lowest – just when he needed someone’s support the most. It sent him plummeting into the depths of despair. Why this cruel timing? Why was he plagued by such bad luck?

What had all his efforts been for, what had he been living for, all this time? Maurice Maeterlinck’s book The Blue Bird told a similar story. The main characters, the children, Tyltyl and Mytyl, encounter a child in the ‘Kingdom of the Future’ who is destined to bring into this world nothing except three illnesses. This child would catch scarlet fever, whooping cough and measles soon after birth, and die. Yukio remembered the sadness he felt when reading this book as a child. If that kind of fate was unalterable, then how unfair life was! If people didn’t have the power to alter their undeserved fate, then he just couldn’t see their reasons for living.

When Yukio came to, his eyes were flooded. He only realized they were tears when he wiped away those that ran down his cheeks with his hands. His hands, once vapour, had returned to the corporeal world, and his surroundings, which had been flickering past him, had at some point stopped moving.

Whirr, whirr-whirr…

Hearing the sound of grinding coffee beans, he looked around at the counter. The rotating ceiling fan, the shaded lamps, the large wall clocks – none of these had changed from several seconds earlier. But the person behind the counter was different. Yukio had never laid eyes on this giant with almond-shaped eyes who was doing the grinding. Only Yukio and the giant were present in the room. Immediately, he was gripped by doubt.

Have I really returned to the past?

He couldn’t think how to make sure. Certainly, Kazu the waitress was no longer there, and there was a giant he didn’t know behind the counter. His body had turned to vapour, and he had seen his surroundings flowing past him. That alone, however, was not enough to convince him that he had travelled back.

The man behind the counter stood casually grinding beans, unfazed by Yukio’s appearance. Even though Yukio was a stranger to him, and he had suddenly appeared in this chair, he seemed to be acting as if it was all perfectly normal. He didn’t even show any interest in talking to him, which suited Yukio fine. He was in no mood to come to this place and answer a flurry of questions. But he did want to know whether he had returned, as he had wished, to a time when Kinuyo was alive.

Kyoko had said that Kinuyo was hospitalized six months earlier, in spring. He needed to ask what month and year it was.

‘Er…’ he began before being interrupted…

‘Hello.’

The layout of the cafe meant that there was a moment, straight after the doorbell rang, when you didn’t know who had entered. But Yukio knew whose voice it was immediately.

Mum…

After a few moments of watching the entrance near the cash register, he saw Kinuyo hobble in, using Yohsuke’s shoulder for support.