Toshikazu Kawaguchi - Before the Coffee Gets Cold

He looked at her with her head bowed, and quietly picked up his zipped portfolio. From it, he pulled out a plain brown envelope. Its four corners were crumpled as though he had been carrying it around for a long time. There was no address on the envelope, but it looked like a letter.

He held this letter tentatively in both hands, holding it up a little in front of his chest for her to see.

‘What’s that?’ she asked, pausing once again in what she was doing.

‘For my wife,’ he muttered in a quiet voice. ‘It’s for my wife.’

‘Is that a letter?’

‘Yeah.’

‘For your wife?’

‘Yeah, I never managed to give it to her.’

‘So, you want to return to the day you meant to pass it to her?’

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ he answered, once again without any hesitation.

‘So, where is your wife now?’ she asked.

Rather than answering straight away, he paused in awkward silence. ‘Um…’

She stood looking squarely at him, waiting for him to answer.

‘I don’t know,’ he said in a barely discernible voice as he began to scratch his head. After this admission his expression hardened.

She said nothing in reply.

Then, as if offering an excuse, he said, ‘Hmm, but, I really had a wife,’ and then he hastily added, ‘Her name was…’ He began tapping his head with his finger. ‘Huh? That’s odd.’ He tilted his head. ‘What was her name?’ he said, and went quiet again.

At some time during this, Kei had returned from the back room. Her face looked drained, maybe because she had just witnessed Kazu and Fusagi’s exchange.

‘Well that’s odd. I’m sorry,’ Fusagi said, forcing an awkward smile.

Kazu’s face showed a subtle mix of emotions – it wasn’t quite her normal cool expression, but nor was she showing much empathy.

‘Don’t worry about it…’ she said.

Kazu silently looked to the entrance.

‘Ah,’ she gasped when she saw Kohtake standing in the doorway.

Kohtake worked as a nurse at the local hospital. She must have been on her way home. Instead of her nurse’s uniform, she was wearing an olive-green tunic and navy-blue capri pants. She had a black shoulder bag on one shoulder, and she was wiping the sweat from her brow with a lilac handkerchief. Kohtake casually acknowledged Kei and Kazu standing behind the counter before walking up to Fusagi’s table.

‘Hello, Fusagi, I see you’re here again today,’ she said.

Hearing his name, he looked up at Kohtake in puzzlement, before averting his eyes and lowering his head in silence.

Kohtake sensed that his mood was different from usual. She supposed he might not be feeling very well. ‘Fusagi, are you OK?’ she asked gently.

Fusagi lifted his head and looked directly at her. ‘I’m sorry. Have we met before?’ he asked apologetically.

Kohtake lost her smile. In a cold silence, the lilac handkerchief she had just used to wipe her brow dropped from her hand onto the floor.

Fusagi had early onset Alzheimer’s disease, and was losing his memory. The disease causes rapid depletion of the brain’s neural cells. The brain pathologically atrophies, causing loss of intelligence and changes to the personality. One of the striking symptoms of early onset Alzheimer’s is how the deterioration of brain function appears so sporadic. Sufferers forget some things but remember other things. In Fusagi’s case, his memories were gradually disappearing, starting with the most recent. Meanwhile, his previously hard-to-please personality had been slowing mellowing.

In that moment, Fusagi remembered that he had a wife, but he didn’t remember that Kohtake, standing before him, was his wife.

‘I guess not,’ Kohtake said quietly as she took one, then two steps back.

Kazu stared at Kohtake, while Kei pointed her pale face down at the floor. Kohtake slowly turned round and walked to the seat at the counter that was furthest from Fusagi and sat down.

It was after sitting down that she noticed the handkerchief that had dropped from her hand. She decided to ignore it and pretend it wasn’t hers. But Fusagi noticed the handkerchief, which had fallen near his feet, and picked it up. He stared at it in his hand for a while, and then he rose from his chair and walked over to the counter where Kohtake was sitting.

‘You’ll have to excuse me. Recently I’ve been forgetting a lot,’ he said bowing his head.

Kohtake didn’t look at him. ‘OK,’ she said. She took the handkerchief in her trembling hand.

Fusagi bowed his head again and shuffled awkwardly back to his seat. He sat down but couldn’t relax. After turning several pages of his magazine, he paused and scratched his head. Then a few moments later, he reached for his coffee and took one sip. The cup had only just been refilled, but—

‘Damn coffee’s cold,’ he muttered.

‘Another refill?’ Kazu asked.

But he stood up in a hurry. ‘I’ll be leaving now,’ he said abruptly, closing his magazine and putting away his things.

Kohtake continued to stare at the floor with her hands on her lap as she clenched the handkerchief tightly.

Fusagi moved to the cash register and handed over the bill. ‘How much?’

‘Three hundred and eighty yen, please,’ Kazu said, glancing sideways at Kohtake. She punched in the amount on the cash-register keys.

‘Three hundred and eighty yen.’ Fusagi pulled out a thousand-yen note from his well-worn leather wallet. ‘Right, here’s a thousand,’ he said as he handed the note over.

‘Receiving one thousand yen,’ Kazu said, taking the money and punching the cash-register keys.

Fusagi kept glancing at Kohtake, but with no apparent purpose. He appeared to be just restlessly looking around while waiting for the change.

‘That’s six hundred and twenty yen change.’

Fusagi quickly reached out his hand and took the change. ‘Thanks for the coffee,’ he said, almost apologetically, and hurried out.

‘Thank you, come again…’

Upon Fusagi’s departure, the cafe fell into an uncomfortable silence. The woman in the dress quietly read her book, unbothered as ever with what was going on around her. With no background music playing, the only sounds that could be heard were the constant ticking of the clocks and the woman in the dress occasionally turning the page of her book.

Kazu first broke this long silence. ‘Kohtake…’ she said. But she was unable to find the appropriate words.

‘It’s OK, I have been mentally preparing for today.’ Kohtake smiled at Kei and Kazu. ‘Don’t worry.’

But after speaking she once again looked down at the floor.

She had explained Fusagi’s illness to Kei and Kazu before, and Nagare and Hirai knew about it too. She had resigned herself to the fact that one day he would completely forget who she was. She was always preparing herself. If it happens, she thought, I will care for him as a nurse. I am a nurse, so I can do that.

Early onset Alzheimer’s disease progresses differently for each individual, depending on a whole range of factors which include age, gender, the cause of the illness, and the treatment. Fusagi’s rate of deterioration was progressing rapidly.

Kohtake was still in shock from his forgetting who she was. She was struggling to get things straight in her head while the general mood was so low. She turned to Kei, but she was in the kitchen. Almost instantly, she appeared holding a half-gallon bottle of sake.

‘A gift from a customer,’ Kei said as she put it down on the table. ‘Drink, anyone?’ she asked, with smiling eyes, still red from crying. The name on the label was Seven Happinesses.

Kei’s spur-of-the-moment decision had introduced a ray of light into the gloomy atmosphere, and eased the tension between the three.