Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

Changes happened in my life as well. As the area prospered, and one by one our boys went out to work, my husband and I weren’t so hard-pressed for money anymore. Ready-made clothes became more popular, so fewer dressmaking orders came in, but we were comfortable enough by that time for me to reduce the amount of work I took in anyway. Instead of riding the train to Karuizawa I began driving there in a minicar. Our eldest boy was a godsend to us. After graduating from Shinshu University, he went to work at the local Ueda Credit Bank, helping out with the family budget as long as his two brothers still needed our support. He married young, bringing into the family circle a sensible, hardworking girl whose people made and sold pickles. Her first child was Ami, who later helped out in Karuizawa. Strictly speaking, Ami was my grandchild, but since I was still in my thirties when she was born, she didn’t feel that way to me. Partly because our daughter-in-law helped out in her parents’ business until her second baby came along, I really was a second mother to Ami when she was small. She was the same age as Yoko’s Miki. I used to take her to Karuizawa with me piggyback, and in no time she fit right in as a playmate for the Saegusa sisters’ grandchildren. My husband had thought I might want a baby of my own, and was relieved to find out I didn’t want one in the least.

Eventually Uncle Genji died. After his health declined, I went to visit him several times in Tokyo, and toward the end I stayed in his house in Soto Kanda for nearly a month, nursing him while that husky-voiced woman of his added a hairpiece to her thinning hair, pinning it up in back, and went out bravely to attend to her small restaurant. His ashes were interred in a Tokyo cemetery.

Once Yoko married, no one mentioned Taro’s name in her presence. Even Harue stopped referring to the “rickshaw man’s descendant” in front of her. The Oiwake cottage might never have existed. I stayed away from it for a long time, but the thought of it rotting away gave me pangs, so once I got my little car and could drive over, I started dropping in twice a year to air the place in secret, not telling either Natsue or Yoko. I just opened the windows and closet doors to let in some fresh air. I couldn’t imagine anyone ever living there again and assumed that in the end the building would be torn down and the property sold, yet when I stepped inside, the past seemed to swirl around me along with the dust, making me nostalgic.

It was all over between Taro and us. And yet we weren’t left completely in the dark about his doings. He did so spectacularly well for himself in New York that whenever Harue’s husband traveled there on business he would hear rumors about him, rumors that passed from Harue to her sisters and so to me. First we heard that after quitting his job as a chauffeur and becoming some kind of a repairman at a Japanese company he had gone right into sales, making such giant strides that he was soon riding around in a Mercedes. Then, although I’m not sure whether it’s true or not, the word was that he’d done something dishonest and left the company. We were shaking our heads over this when we next heard that he’d gone into business with an American. The latest news was that he had become extremely rich.

In the fall of 1981, Takero died in Sapporo from a second heart attack. He was due to retire that year and had suggested to Natsue that they go back to Tokyo once he gave up his teaching post—only to end up dying on the eve of retirement. I heard the turnout at his funeral was huge.

Shortly after that, toward the end of the year, my brother, now the head of the family in Saku, was contacted by a local real estate agent whose records showed that some twenty years earlier the Utagawa family had bought a property in Oiwake through the Tsuchiyas. No one seemed to be using the cottage currently, and would somebody please contact the Utagawas and inquire whether they had any interest in selling? My brother passed the message on to me. Apparently some company wanted to build a vacation house for its employees and was negotiating with various local landowners. Whether out of ignorance or sheer determination, they were offering 30 percent more than the going rate. Since Oiwake was full of untouched woods, why anyone should go to so much trouble to buy land where other people’s houses already stood I had no idea, but I didn’t give it much thought. Rather, the knowledge that the Oiwake cottage would soon disappear left me mourning for the past and all the memories of old Mrs. Utagawa the place contained. There was nothing I could do about it, however, but pick up the telephone and call Natsue. Just as I thought she would, she treated the proposal as a godsend. Ever since Takero’s funeral she’d been living with her sisters in Seijo, and as soon as she could sell the house in Sapporo she planned to buy two small condominiums in Seijo near the station, one to live in and one to rent out. Any cash she could come by was very welcome. Of the place where her daughter had caused such a scandal she had nothing but bad memories.

Yoko heard the news and called me from Nogizaka. “We’re losing the Oiwake cottage …,” she said, her voice trailing off, and then, probably thinking about the house in Chitose Funabashi, she corrected herself. “We’re losing the Oiwake cottage too.” I realized then that she hadn’t spoken the word “Oiwake” in years. She never mentioned Taro.

Around the end of January I had a phone call from Natsue. The papers had been drawn up and the deal would be concluded by the end of February, when the property would be handed over. The purchaser would probably tear the cottage down eventually, so there was no need to tidy it up inside, but the real estate agent had told her to remove anything she wanted before then. She had no intention of going all the way to Oiwake in the middle of winter. She had already taken out the things she wanted, things of any value, and as she was about to move from a house into an apartment that was significantly smaller, she certainly didn’t want anything else. If the snow wasn’t too deep, would I mind going in for a last look around? I was welcome to keep anything that looked useful. Big pieces of furniture could be left, but any small, personal items—the sort of thing it would be awkward to let strangers see—she would like me to dispose of. She had no idea I had been going there twice a year to give the place an airing.

LESS THAN A week after Natsue’s call, the phone rang at about ten-thirty in the morning in my house in Miyota. My daughter-in-law handed me the receiver with a puzzled look, and a voice in my ear said, “It’s me, Taro.”

“Taro …?” I said, half in doubt.

“Yeah, it’s me.”

I hadn’t heard that voice in fifteen years, but it had the same diffident tone to it as when he was a child.

“Where are you?”

“Karuizawa.”

Shocked that he was so close by, I felt the blood drain from my head. The hand holding the receiver started to tremble, but with my daughter-in-law watching I controlled myself, though hardly knowing what I was doing.

He was staying at the Prince Hotel, he said.

Afraid of my voice sounding too shaken, I said nothing. He asked if I could join him there for lunch, or if I wasn’t free then perhaps dinner that evening or lunch the next day. At any rate he hoped I would come out to see him at least once. His Japanese sounded a little awkward.

“I’ll come now,” I managed to reply.

“Is noon all right? Or shall we make it a little later, around one?”

“One o’clock would be fine.”

I hung up and turned to stare hollow-eyed at my daughter-in-law, standing there with her head cocked innocently to one side. I told her I was going to the Prince Hotel to meet an old friend, someone from the family I’d served during my Tokyo days. I kept my voice as expressionless as possible. Since the birth of her second child, she’d become a full-time mother, thus freeing me from the responsibility of babysitting and letting me go out whenever I pleased. I felt wobbly. My knees were weak, my head muddled. I couldn’t think straight. I forced my uncooperative body into gear and got ready to leave, but putting on makeup, doing my hair, and choosing what to wear took twice as long as usual. I’d lived so long in the country, with so few opportunities to go anywhere, that my sense of fashion was not what it used to be. Harue’s words rang in my ears as I dithered: “Common people hardly ever dress up, so when they do, they go overboard and end up looking like bar girls, all dolled up with ringlets and a ton of accessories.” The last time I’d seen Taro, I’d been thirty; I was now forty-five. Go for a quiet, understated look, I told myself, surprised by my own intensity as I peered into old Mrs. Utagawa’s full-length mirror for a final inspection. Memories of the nonstop quarreling Taro and I used to do came back to me as if it had been yesterday or a phantom scene from another life. Such an urge to see him filled every corner of me that I could hardly believe I had sworn never to set eyes on him again.