Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

“I see …”

It must have been the disappointment. I could think of nothing to say, and only fiddled idly with the teacup in my hands.

“What’s wrong?”

Taro seemed unable to understand why I should be downcast. I’m sure he saw it in simple terms, and was glad he wouldn’t have to impose on me when I was only just able to make ends meet. I myself wasn’t really sure why I was so bitterly disappointed, but it felt as if a gaping hole had opened in my chest, where the wind moaned through.

“I’ve been thinking.” I looked up as I said this. Maybe it had become second nature for me to hide my feelings. My voice sounded strangely dry to my ears. “I thought you could come here to my place and then just devote yourself to studying. I thought you could even go to college from here, get a part-time job.”

He looked at me in surprise. I went on.

“It would be so much easier.”

“But …”

“And then, even if it was a six-year program, you could finish it almost without any delay.”

His mouth hung open, but no words came. I forced myself to sound cheery.

“Someday when you’re rich and famous, you can pay me back.”

“But Fumiko …” He closed his mouth for a moment. Then he said in a low voice, “If you did that, you’d have no future. You’d be unable to marry again.”

“I have no kind of future anyway.” After I said this, a different thought struck me. He might be put off by the prospect of having to shoulder responsibility for me. “Besides, I’ve had enough of marriage. I’d rather go on as I am than remarry.” Forcing myself to sound cheerful again, I added, “You could marry Yoko.”

Taro had been staring at me, but now he looked down at the tabletop. For some time we were quiet.

“Did you write to her?” I asked finally.

“Just the other day. Sent it general delivery.” He was still looking down.

“So she knows?”

“Yeah, pretty much everything.”

“And did she write back?”

“Yes.”

“What did she say?”

He turned his gloomy gaze out beyond the window, into the distance. I had done the laundry that morning, so my washcloths, stockings, aprons, and so on hung on the line, and framed beyond them was a patch of pale cold wintry sky.

“That she’ll wait for you?”

Without answering this, he said, “Before she starts college she’s going to New York with her mother on spring vacation.”

Then he was silent. Neither of us said anything until, as if on cue, we both laughed in a rueful way. “Going to New York on spring vacation” was such a far cry from our own lives that it sounded faintly ridiculous.

“If she doesn’t marry you, that’s all right too,” I said. “Someone far better suited to be your wife will come along, Taro, someone who will appreciate you more than she does.”

He looked down again. After a while he raised his eyes and said that as long as the Azumas kept their promise, he would stay where he was. So maybe he did dislike the idea of living with me indefinitely and being tied down. Or maybe he just didn’t want to be in my debt, period. Ever since he was a little boy, he had never allowed himself to take advantage of people’s kindness. He had never even taken old Mrs. Utagawa’s kindness for granted.

The monotonous ticking of the old clock from the Utagawa house echoed in the silence. To me it had never seemed a disconsolate sound, but that day it did.

As Taro was about to leave, I handed him a small envelope.

“What’s this?”

“A spare key.”

“You had one made for me?”

“Yes,” I said, and smiled. “When things get to be too much for you, when life piles up on you, come back anytime.”

THE SECOND “MISCONDUCT” had far more serious consequences.

The cold eased up and the next thing I knew, it was spring. One Saturday around the end of March, as the season was building toward its peak, I received a phone call at work from Yoko. The second incident followed from that contact. After the two weeks of spring vacation in New York, she had come back to Japan ahead of her mother to attend the entrance ceremony for Fuji Women’s University. She was staying in Seijo with her aunt Fuyue and grandparents and would be leaving for Sapporo in two days’ time, she said, but Grampy had given her some spending money and the following day, Sunday, she wanted to take me out for lunch if I had time. Yoko had no sense of direction, but she insisted that if she just followed the signs she would be all right, and so we arranged to meet in Shibuya, by the statue of the faithful dog Hachiko.

She was dressed head to toe in an outfit straight from New York, waiting in the crowd looking rather full of herself. Exactly what made her stand out I could not have said, but the overall effect was quite sophisticated. From a distance you might have taken her for a film actress or someone of that sort. She was attracting glances. This was just when the miniskirt had begun to be popular overseas, and in her moss-green sheath with its high collar and high hem, big gold hoop earrings, and matching bracelets, she looked definitely stylish. Her curly hair too had been tamed and waved, and looked quite unlike her usual mop. I supposed her appearance was a mark of her pride in having been to New York, together with an effort to look her best for her first trip to Tokyo in quite some time. The previous summer in Karuizawa she’d been so determinedly scruffy that I never dreamed she could look so attractive. But I reminded myself that she was now eighteen, an age when it’s almost a sin for a girl not to look pretty.

It felt strange having Yoko treat me. A bowl of noodles would be fine, I said, but she insisted that, now she was here in Tokyo, she needed to satisfy a craving for genuine Edo-style sushi, without spending a fortune. She wouldn’t hear of doing otherwise, so we went into a place I often passed on my way to and from work.

After ordering, Yoko brought out two little boxes wrapped with crimson ribbons, small enough to hold in the palm of her hand, and declared, “Here, Fumiko, these are for you! An Elizabeth Arden compact and lipstick. This one is from everybody, and this one is from me.”

She then plunged into all the news from New York. Her uncle Hiroshi had managed through a travel agent to hire a shiny black limousine with a Japanese chauffeur for her and her mother. They had gone out in style every day to see the sights of Manhattan—everything from the Empire State Building and the Metropolitan Museum of Art to Chinatown. Her aunt Harue was taking lessons in oil painting from a Japanese artist in Greenwich Village and must have inherited Grampy’s talent, as she was really pretty good. Mari and Eri were students at Manhattanville College, which would allow them to transfer directly to Tokyo’s Sacred Heart, the present empress’s alma mater, when they returned to Japan. Her sister had been accepted into Juilliard and, although their mother wasn’t to know, already had an American boyfriend, a cellist. In any case Yuko was much freer now that she was out from under her mother’s thumb. On and on she went, the words tumbling out.

Thin as she was, Yoko had always had a good appetite, and she polished off the sushi in less than fifteen minutes. It was when we were brought some fresh tea that the topic of Taro came up.

Her animation abruptly faded and a quite different, much graver mood took its place. There was a short silence. Here it comes, I thought, and I was right.

“Fumiko,” she said and looked straight at me, leaving her mouth open. She seemed almost angry with me. “What the Azumas did is just terrible.”

“Well, that’s life.”

“It’s awful.”

“Yes, but it happens.”

She kept looking fiercely at me, but finally said more hesitantly, “Actually, I thought I’d go and see him after this. I brought along his address in Kamata.”