Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

Now at last I understood why she was so dressed up. At the same time, I knew I would have to go with her. It was worrying enough to think of this pretty, doll-like creature wandering in the hubbub of that factory town with a lost, no-sense-of-direction look written all over her. Worse yet, the thought of her coming under the prying eyes of the Azuma family, people who had called her a “nympho,” made me shudder—less for her sake than for Taro’s.

“I’ll take you.”

“Would you really? That would be wonderful.”

Apparently she’d been expecting me to say this. She smiled brightly, looking relieved.

She had told her aunt Fuyue that she was going to go shopping after lunch, so before we left she would need to pick something up, she said. Then she asked casually, “Has he changed?”

“He’s grown up.”

“Hm.” She thought this over before asking, “What about me, have I grown up too?”

“Well, you are eighteen now,” I answered a bit curtly, thinking that she was fishing for compliments. Perhaps I was wrong. She put down the teacup she’d been holding in both hands and looked straight at me.

“Taro is really grateful to you. More than you know.”

“Is he?”

“Of course he is. Thanks to what you said he’s now able to go on with his studies, even if he did decide to stay with that hag. Why wouldn’t he be grateful?”

I avoided her eyes and looked at the tabletop. She went on, oblivious.

“And anyway, after Grandma died, you were the only one who was kind to him. I know it meant a lot to him.”

Her voice caught, choked with sentiment. Looking back, later on that day, how very sweet and innocent that sentiment came to seem.

“HOW COULD I ever marry someone like that? He looks so rough, and his speech is rough too, he’s so … oh, I don’t know, he’s just a total stranger. I couldn’t do it! How could I upset Mama and Papa to marry him? What would Aunt Harue and everyone say? Or Uncle Masao and Aunt Yayoi? They might not say anything, they’re so nice, but what would they think? And Masayuki—just the idea of what he’d think is so embarrassing I could die. What happened is … I saw it in a flash. Our future. I saw it, all of it, way into the future. There’d be … nothing. Everything would be so small … and narrow … and limited, I couldn’t breathe!” From the moment we got on the Yamanote Line, tears welled in her eyes. The other passengers looked on in surprise as she got out tissues and blew her nose, big tears rolling down her cheeks.

“I don’t want to be rich,” she said. “I’m happy just the way I am.”

“What do you mean, just the way you are?”

“The way our family is, I mean.”

“Yoko, dear, your family is rich.”

“No, we’re not.”

“Compared to most people, you are.”

“Then I don’t care, I could be poorer than this. And though maybe it’s better to have a college degree than not, it doesn’t really matter to me in the end.” She shook her head petulantly. “But that I couldn’t bear.”

The hair that had been so prettily waved earlier in the day was back to its usual frizz, and in the course of all the walking and crying she’d done, her makeup was gone. To top it off, her nose was red from being blown.

She shook her head again forcefully, setting the gold hoop earrings swaying, and repeated, “I just couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t bear what?”

“Oh … I don’t know how to explain it.” She went on, half to herself. “It’s the look on his face as he kept droning on about the same old things. It was unbearable! When the equivalency test is going to be, how many subjects the University of Tokyo needs for its entrance exam, how tough it is to get into the science and physics department or whatever you call it. Also, how much the tuition costs and how much he’ll need for living expenses and on and on and on about stupid things that I just couldn’t care less about! All of it!”

“Money isn’t something you can just ignore.”

“I know, but going on about it the way he does is so petty. So narrow. So … small-minded. He’s become so common inside. It shows in his face.”

That day, the moment I brought Taro into the coffee shop where Yoko was waiting and she at last set eyes on him, her face drained of color. I think probably it was partly a young girl’s shock at suddenly being confronted by her childhood friend’s virility. But she also saw in him the same thing I had seen the other day, and felt a keen disappointment—and consternation. Taro for his part couldn’t take his eyes off this new and prettier version of Yoko. He stared at her, embarrassed but wide-eyed; he looked to me like a hopeless idiot. I occupied myself for a little while in the station bookstore so they could have some time alone together, and then I went back to the coffee shop and took a seat some distance from their table. I pulled a paperback out of my purse and looked up from time to time to watch them. Whatever they’d been talking about, their conversation was now sluggish. They would exchange a few sullen words, eyes fixed on the table in front of them. Taro seemed to be resisting the urge to look at her. After an hour or so I went over and said maybe we’d better be going, as we’d come a long way and Aunt Fuyue would worry. Still looking glum, they stood up without protest. As usual, Taro wanted to go with her to Seijo, hoping to extend their time together as long as possible, and as usual she swung her hair and stamped her foot. “No! Don’t! Not today. I mean it!” By way of a compromise, he got off at Shinagawa. And so they parted.

Since Yoko was going all the way to Shinjuku, I would be getting off before her, at Shibuya. Just before leaving, I said reproachfully, “I can’t help feeling sorry for Taro, the way things ended.”

“It’s all right,” she said. “We’re going to meet again.”

Swept along by the throng of departing passengers, I was ejected onto the platform with her words still ringing in my ears. She was traveling to Sapporo the next day, so they had precious little time. I wondered how they were going to manage it, but even if it was only for a short while, he can’t have felt so downhearted after all, and Yoko herself couldn’t be nearly as fed up with him as she had made me believe. For Taro’s sake, I felt relieved. I saw no reason to warn Fuyue. The possibility that the two of them might go off to Oiwake together simply never occurred to me.

EARLY WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, three days after that, Fuyue rang me at work. “Have your parents gotten a telephone?” She was always the calm one in the family, but that day I heard panic in her voice.

“Yes,” I said, “they put in a line last year.”

“I’ll explain later, but I need you to call home immediately and have someone go to Oiwake to see if Yoko is there. If she is, they need to take her home with them, by force if need be, and if she’s not, then I want them to go look for her in Karuizawa.” She took a breath before going on. “It’s possible that she and Taro may have eloped.”

With my boss’s permission, I called home. My brother happened to be in that day, and just over an hour later he called back.

“She was there all right.”

“With him?”

“Nope, alone.”

“Alone?”

“She’s lying by the heater right now. Got a bad fever. I’m about to take her to the hospital.”

“You are?”

“Yup.”

“It’s that serious?”

“She’ll be okay, I think, but she’s got herself one hell of a fever.”

I left work early, met Fuyue at Ueno station, and together we took the Asama super-express bound for Nagano. On the way she filled me in. On Monday, the day after I saw Yoko, the Saegusa housekeeper had taken her to Ueno station, where she was due to board the afternoon sleeper express to Sapporo. They had arrived in plenty of time, and the housekeeper went on home, assured by Yoko that there was no need for her to hang around. Fuyue had taken it for granted that Yoko boarded the train. Tuesday passed without incident, and then Wednesday noon, that very day, Yoko’s father had phoned from Sapporo to say that she hadn’t arrived on the morning train as expected. Fuyue told him that Yoko had left on Monday, so she should have arrived the previous day. No, she was coming in time for Thursday’s entrance ceremony, Takero asserted, so she’d been scheduled to leave Tuesday and arrive Wednesday. They went back and forth until finally it dawned on them that Yoko had contrived the whole thing. She had told her aunt that she was leaving Monday and her father that it was Tuesday, setting it up so that she would be on her own for an entire day without anybody being the wiser. Quite cunning, if true, but all anyone knew for certain was that here it was Wednesday and there was no sign of her in Sapporo. When Fuyue had urged her to fly home, Yoko claimed she was sick of airplanes and insisted on taking the train. In retrospect it all fitted together. Her father was ready to file a missing persons report with the police when Fuyue, remembering the previous “misconduct,” proposed that she contact my family first and have them look for her in Oiwake or Karuizawa.