Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

When O-Tsune saw me she smirked and said, “That girl of theirs is mental, isn’t she?” She said it straight out, without any pretended deference. She must have felt she’d had all she was ever going to get from the Utagawas.

“She’s a nympho, that’s what.” This comment from the eldest boy caused some jeering laughter.

The other brother got into the act. “Taro’s got a big one, like a horse.”

Silently Taro helped load the van. Next to his brothers I could see that tall though he was, his build was still slim and boyish. If those two brutes took him on together, he wouldn’t stand a chance. The memory of him years ago with his arm in a sling came back to mind.

He saw me but kept his lips pressed tight, avoiding my eye. He was trying to load a big carton onto the bed of the van by himself.

I went over to him and told him, “If anything happens, come to me,” and for the first time he looked me in the face with a strained expression.

Mr. Azuma alone said a proper sort of farewell, and handed me the address in Kamata where they were going.

AFTER NEW YEAR’S, when the plum buds were tinged with color and spring was in the air, I got a divorce. I had found out about the other woman not long before. When I was alone I often used to open the drawer in the paulownia dresser old Mrs. Utagawa bequeathed to me, take out the bankbook I kept secret from my husband, and look at it. He had married me trusting me to keep quiet if I ever discovered what was going on, but once he realized I was bent on divorce, he seemed afraid I might make a fuss and call attention to the situation, so everything was settled swiftly. Our marriage lasted less than a year and was childless.

Once divorced, I felt that I’d paid my dues to society. Rather than pain, there was only a sense of liberation. Now, finally, I could live my life as I chose. I took with me only the things that were mine to begin with and rented a small flat—one four-and-a-half-mat room and a cramped kitchen—in a humble, two-story wooden building in the Sangenjaya area of Tokyo: Evergreen Apartments No. 2. Even after being stung for key money and the security deposit, I had enough left to live on for a few months, but in any case I soon found an opening at a company that manufactured measuring instruments, with an office in Shibuya. The company was small, and I was already twenty-eight. Assuming they were unlikely to check up on what I wrote about my background, I fiddled my educational record on my résumé, putting down that I had graduated from Saku High School. For my work experience too, I exaggerated the size of Uncle Genji’s restaurant and said that I had worked there in the office. My handwriting is good, if I may say so, and that got me noticed. Also the interview went well, and I was hired more or less on the spot. With my smooth telephone manner and a decent wardrobe from the Saegusa sisters, no one had any reason to doubt me. I couldn’t help feeling a bit amazed that I had actually pulled off this deceit, being a cautious sort of person, but honesty would only have led to tedious, physically tiring jobs, and I chose the lesser of two evils. Earlier, I had worked up enough courage to tell my uncle about the divorce. Seeing me in tears, he blamed himself for not seeing through someone who turned out to be such a rat, and promised to do all he could to help. He approved of my falsifying my work record and agreed to be my reference.

THAT SUMMER, I went back home for the Bon festival holidays and visited Karuizawa for the first time in two years. Fuyue came out on the porch in an apron and rubber gloves and cried out, “Fumiko!” before ushering me through the dining room into the kitchen, where she brought me up-to-date. She and her parents were the only ones staying there that summer. Harue and her family were still in New York, and Natsue and her family had decided not to come: the new house in Sapporo was under construction, and with Takero absorbed in his research as usual, even during the summer, Natsue needed to be around for consultation with the workmen on a myriad of little things. Yoko wasn’t allowed to travel by herself, after the previous summer’s “misconduct,” so none of the Utagawas would be putting in an appearance. But though their house was relatively quiet, the one next door was lively for a change. Masayuki was now a student at the University of Tokyo and looked even more like his late uncle Noriyuki than before. He cut such a striking figure that he turned heads, and girls from neighboring summer houses came by on various pretexts. The Demon was undoubtedly hard at work sorting out which of them were from “good families.” As for my news, I had sent a postcard informing everyone of the fact of my divorce and nothing more, so Fuyue only heard the details on this visit and seemed angrier at my ex-husband than I was.

Knowing my way around the Saegusa kitchen, I joined in and helped while we chatted. So many people had migrated from the countryside to Tokyo that farming villages no longer had any hands to spare, and maids were becoming scarce in Japan. With Harue and the others off in New York, fewer people lived in the Seijo house in Tokyo, and after Mie, the “pocket pinup” girl, quit her job, they had switched to a housekeeper who had a family and commuted from home. She came with them to Karuizawa only for the first few days; the rest of the summer they had to fend for themselves. “It’s all the harder because Grammy still wants to sit back and live a life of leisure,” Fuyue said, adding, “It’s such a help, Fumiko, to have you come and pitch in!” As I was leaving she invited me to come back again the next day if possible, which I decided to do. At home I had to tiptoe around my mother, who in turn tiptoed around my stepfather, and being a woman, I had to do kitchen work wherever I was anyway. I felt more at ease in Karuizawa; I enjoyed myself more. Moreover, since I was no longer a maid but someone who was “kindly helping out,” I was also treated differently. In part it was because Fuyue was lonely, I’m sure, that I was invited to have meals and tea with the three of them, her and her parents. Before I took my leave at the end of the day, she slipped me an envelope of money. But, Fuyue being Fuyue, she wasn’t like her sisters: as we worked around the house together, even though I knew my services were hers to command, I began to feel that we were half friends. From that summer on, my relationship with her shifted to another level.

IN TOKYO, LIFE settled back into its monotonous routine. My emotions were steadier than when I was married, but six days a week I was shut away inside an office. My only luxuries were paperback books and the occasional movie. With the image still fresh in my mind of my parents and grandparents toiling in the fields at home, hardly able to straighten up and stretch, I couldn’t complain. Yet once the excitement of living alone in Tokyo wore off, there was nothing glamorous about ill-fitting rain shutters, stained ceilings, and tatami mats turned brown by the sun. At night, lying on my futon feeling the vibrations of trucks going by on the street outside, I couldn’t help being depressed at the thought of living that way for the rest of my life. The smell of urine from the shared toilet at the end of the hallway, which no amount of scrubbing could reduce, was another constant irritant.

THE FOLLOWING SUMMER, I talked to Fuyue on the telephone and arranged to go to Karuizawa for two nights. While there I saw Natsue and Yoko for the first time in a long while. It had been well over two years, I realized, since I had seen them off for Sapporo. As soon as she laid eyes on me, Natsue dimpled and exclaimed with pleasure: “It’s been so long! How nice to see you again! The housekeeper we have in Miyanomori is the slowest old thing. I’m always saying how much I wish we could have someone like you, Fumiko, but I’ve simply given up hope.” This didn’t seem like empty flattery. Yoko greeted me with a quick, rather shy smile. She was in her last year of high school, all of seventeen, but she seemed neither to have matured as a person nor to have become the least bit more feminine or pretty. Cast as a delinquent ever since the “misconduct” of two years ago, she may have made a habit of sulking for days on end. She looked untidy, as if she never so much as splashed water on her face or combed her hair in the morning. The Shigemitsus, who would otherwise have been next door, were spending their summer vacation in New York; with the other young people all in America, Masayuki included, it probably wasn’t much fun for her to be left on her own. Her mother had wanted to take her to New York, but the Saegusas had asked them to postpone the visit, since they didn’t have room for that many at one time, so she had given up the plan.