Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

“Go ahead.”

“No, it’s okay.”

“Really, please, go ahead.”

I handed him another tissue. He wiped his fingers, and, after pocketing the tissue, reached out again to pull out the same book and remove it from its case. His fingers leafed through it—the same fingers that had neatly screwed the metal cap back on the lampshade moments before. I watched, fascinated, as those lithe but strong-looking fingers turned the yellowed pages of the Girls’ Library . He continued to turn the pages without a word, seeming far away. From downstairs I could hear polite applause followed by a brief silence, and then Nanae starting her favorite crowd-pleaser, Chopin’s étude “Winter Wind.” Taro Azuma was too absorbed in the book to register the sound from below. It was a book I’d read over and over again as a child and, as he flipped through the pages, illustrations appeared along with the story. We stood side by side in silence for a while. He was lost in some reverie, forgetful of everything, even himself; for me it was a strange interlude during which I shared an invisible world with a man I barely knew.

I could tell that he would have preferred to go on reading rather than rejoin the others. I could have invited him to stay and left him there by himself, but I was still a young girl, and I didn’t have the boldness to offer my bedroom, with its frilly canopy bed, to a young man. When he finally looked up, as if startled from a dream, I managed to mumble that he was welcome to borrow the book. But he smiled at me again, put it back in its pink-and-white box, and returned it to the shelf.

“So you’ve got a younger sister?” I said.

“No,” he replied, and after a pause: “The books weren’t in our house.”

I must have looked puzzled. He continued, seemingly amused by the expression on my face, “I didn’t grow up in the kind of family that owns books like this.” With his eyes still fixed on me, he added, “In fact, we didn’t have any books at all. Not one.”

I didn’t know what to say. Now wary, he seemed to regret having revealed even that much. He asked where he could wash his hands.

“The bathroom is just out to the left.”

As he walked past me in his dark suit jacket, I caught a whiff of some sweet and pungent smell, like a tangerine. It was faint, barely there, especially compared to the strong odor some Americans have, but unusual for a Japanese. Not an unpleasant scent, but it embarrassed me, and I then was embarrassed by my own embarrassment.

When I went back downstairs to the kitchen, my mother, who was working at the sink, turned to look at me.

“That took a long time. Did you say thank you?”

“Of course I did.”

She motioned toward a pile of dishes in the drainer.

“Quick, grab a towel.”

Before long, I took a fresh pot of green tea out to the living room, where I found Azuma sitting by the Christmas tree, listening to Nanae’s piano playing. His face, oddly illuminated by the miniature flashing red, blue, and green lights, looked disturbingly sullen—so different from the smile I’d seen upstairs. I hoped no one else in the room noticed.

After our guests left and my father went upstairs, the rest of us gathered at the round table in the breakfast nook , and our conversation drifted inevitably to the subject of Taro Azuma, whom Nanae had just met for the first time.

“So, that’s the famous private chauffeur ?” she asked me, lighting a cigarette held between two of the long, slender fingers she liked to show off. She had just recently begun smoking.

“That’s him.”

“ He’s quite good-looking ,” she said in English. Now that she was living in a dormitory with Americans, English expressions had begun to appear quite often in her Japanese conversation. “ And quite sexy too, I thought .”

After blowing a cloud of smoke up toward the ceiling, she glanced at her boyfriend and turned on the charm: “ Sorry, dahling, but you know what I mean .” Then, to the rest of us, she added in Japanese, “But there’s something about him that bothers me.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I don’t know … It’s hard to explain. Maybe it’s because I’ve heard too much about him, but somehow he strikes me as a bit vulgar.”

“Hmm.” You’re one to talk, I said to myself, looking at her multilayered eye shadow and black eyeliner, and her eyebrows, plucked to a mere pencil line, the brow ridge bare as boiled chicken.

“What do you think?” She looked at her boyfriend.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he answered, clearly unwilling to say anything further.

Because he came from such a prominent family, any opinion he offered was liable to sound presumptuous. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this young man, who usually seemed rather slow and unobservant, knew what his social standing did or did not allow him to say.

“Why does he have to be so gloomy?” asked my sister.

“Maybe that’s just his personality.”

“No. It’s more than that. He looks frustrated. It’s as if he can’t contain his frustration.”

The ill humor on Azuma’s face hadn’t escaped people’s notice after all. Though I thought Nanae was quite observant, I held my ground.

“You think so?”

“Perhaps he’s ambitious,” put in my mother, who had just returned from the bathroom at the end of the corridor. “Your father seems to think very highly of him.”

Nanae looked around the table and said, half joking, “I bet he’s memorized my entire set of flash cards by now. But why did you have to give them to him? They don’t cost much. He could have bought his own.” She put on her usual pouty face. I had called to let her know what had happened to them.

Ignoring her remark, my mother pointed at the cigarette in her hand. “You know, Nanae, you can get addicted to those things.”

I was mulling over the word she had used: “ambitious.”

A NEW YEAR started, the spring came, and then the first days of summer.

In New York, where winter is long and cold, when the first signs of summer appear people starving for sunshine immediately start arranging picnics for their weekends. As the trees and grass turned green, my own family took part in this ritual as well, inviting people from my father’s company, loading the trunk of the car with food, charcoal, and a cooler full of beer, and heading for the public park on the shore. Unlike the parties held at our house, there was no need to limit the number of guests, and those who had families there were welcome to bring them along.

The picnic area was on a small rise with a view of the ocean; one side was lined with barbecue grills made of bricks and the other with picnic tables and benches made of logs. It felt good to be moving around in the warm sunlight as I helped my mother spread paper tablecloths and set out stacks of paper napkins, plates, cups, plastic knives and forks, and disposable chopsticks. Among the other young men was Taro Azuma. Now that I think of it, it’s hard to believe that he once made time for such idle amusement, but I suppose he did it partly out of respect for my father but also from a feeling that his position in the company might be precarious.

After I had finished setting the table, I went and stood next to Mrs. Cohen, who was bent over the brick barbecue, cooking clams.

“Smells great!”

“Minae, you’re in a good mood today.”

“Why not? It’s nice weather, plus soon I’ll be graduating from that school I hate.” I was about to say, “And then I’ll go to college,” but stopped, sensing that Taro Azuma was standing nearby.

Mrs. Cohen put a few of the clams on a small paper plate, along with a slice of lemon, and called out to my father, “Let’s start!”