Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Thought I’d come back for a couple of weeks in the summertime and use it.”

“Every year?”

“Maybe.”

“Use it for what?” I asked, knowing there was no point in asking.

“I’ve never had a real vacation …”

“Yes, but that place is in no condition to use. I air it out once in a while, but the futons and the quilts were too much bother, so I never touched them once in fifteen years. I never swept the floors, either.” Other emotions swelled in me, but these details were all that came out. “It’s just not usable,” I said firmly, though I knew it was a waste of breath.

“It’ll be fine. I’ll fix it up as I go along.”

He stared into space. A vision rose in my mind of this man, who handled more money daily than I would see in my lifetime, hanging out damp, moldy bedding to air and sweeping frayed tatami mats in the little highland cottage. He was always good at working with his hands; he probably would look after the place himself well enough, however ridiculous the whole undertaking was.

After a moment I said, “When will you be back this summer?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“I’ll fix it up so you can use it by summertime.”

His eyes widened. “That’s not why I got in touch, Fumiko. I just wanted you to leave it as it is.”

“It’s all right. I’ll clean it up for you.”

After a short pause he said uncertainly, “You will?…”

“I’ll do my best to see everything is just the way it used to be.”

Even as a child he had never been able to say thank you at the right moment, nor did he now. He merely said in a slightly more relaxed voice, “When I came back to Japan before, I went to Chitose Funabashi.”

I said nothing.

“Now there are three little houses crowded together on the old plot, and close by is a big highway, Ring Road 8 I think it’s called. It’s all changed. I tell you, Japan is one scary place, the way things change.”

Noticing my distracted expression, he fell silent. He might be feeling relieved, thinking we were reconciled, but I was filled with conflicting emotions. I already regretted having offered to do his cleaning, as if he and I were accomplices—though in what crime, I couldn’t have said.

The meal had ended and coffee was served when Taro reached inside the breast pocket of his suit jacket and produced a bulky envelope. It was a horizontal, Western-style envelope; he mustn’t have had any Japanese-style ones on hand.

“Here.”

He held it out, looking almost angry. Thinking it was a letter to Yoko, I hesitated, and he thrust it at me again till it almost touched my chest. Though I had known it would come to this in the end, now that it had happened I felt too weary to react.

“Here,” he repeated, still thrusting the envelope at me.

I waited a full beat before taking it with an audible sigh. It was strangely hefty, almost as if he had handed me a bar of lead. I turned it over, immediately seeing through the unsealed flap that it contained a wad of crisp new ten-thousand-yen bills.

“What’s this?”

“Well, you know …”

“What is this for?”

“Look, I don’t know what I’m supposed to say, all right?” He slowly reddened.

“How can you be so rude!”

I might have turned red too. I felt a rush of anger. After all I had done for him out of pity, my heart going out to him, now that he was rich he wanted to repay my sympathy with money? I thought of the time I’d scrubbed his grimy little body in the Utagawa bathroom; the time he’d shown up on the doorstep of my apartment looking desperate, in work clothes; the time I’d sat and bowed my head down to the tatami before a grudging Uncle Genji, begging him to help Taro go abroad. Scene after scene from the past flickered through my mind. The next thing I knew, I had flung the envelope back at him. For once I’d given vent physically to my anger—not only anger at Taro, but also an unfocused resentment that I had kept pent up inside me all those years.

“What am I supposed to do?”

He sounded pained. The envelope had landed on the table, upsetting a small espresso cup that fortunately was empty.

There was a brief silence. Then he said in a low, choked voice, staring distractedly at the overturned cup, “How can I thank you in a way that wouldn’t be rude?”

“You can’t!” I retorted. “You can’t ever thank me in a way that wouldn’t be rude. Not ever in your whole life. That’s your comeuppance.”

He stared at me, his shoulders heaving slightly. Under the surface of the sterling young man he’d become I saw the face of a much younger Taro, eyes tightened as if he might start crying. After fifteen years of hard work crowned with brilliant success, he had returned to Japan without a tickertape parade in his hometown or a family to rejoice with him. Once he had visited old Mrs. Utagawa’s grave, the best he could hope for was to come and see me. And here I didn’t even treat him properly, but just heaped sarcasm on him.

I reached out, picked up the envelope, and removed two bills from the wad bound in white tape.

“My housecleaning fee.”

“Thank you.”

He took the envelope I handed him and pulled out another bill, then another and another and another until he’d counted out eight in all and was holding them out to me. “Please take this,” he said with a look of such entreaty that I gave in. He thanked me again; and that’s how Taro and I entered into our strange and ambiguous employer—employee relationship.

That day of our reunion, we went the whole time without once mentioning Yoko’s name.

FUMIKO’S EYES WANDERED several times to the old-fashioned wall clock before she announced, “Time’s up.” She bent her head back slightly as if easing something off. “I’m almost done, but the rest will have to wait for another time.”

In less than an hour she was supposed to pick up Taro Azuma at Middle Karuizawa Station, where he was arriving on the last train from Ueno.

She bent her head back again, then straightened up and let out a long sigh as she looked at the dinner table.

Lit by a dim yellow bulb, the tabletop looked suddenly messy to Yusuke too, crowded with the remains of their makeshift meal: coffee cups, teacups, and small plates; serving dishes that held corncobs and empty steamed soybean pods; plates with bits of smoked salmon, cheese, and pickles scattered on them; slices of lemon and crusts of bread. While it was still light outside they’d sat out on the porch where the insistent sound of the cicadas echoed in his ears as he listened to her talk. When daylight faded and the cicadas quieted down, the mosquitoes then became unbearable and so they had moved indoors, where he kept on listening. The two of them had eaten and drunk whatever she found in the refrigerator, making do.

They quickly cleared the table and went outside to another bright moonlit night.

When Yusuke brought his bicycle around to the gate with its two wooden posts driven into the ground, Fumiko came out that far to see him off. Her purse was in her left hand and car keys dangled from the other.

In the moonlight he saw she had put on some lipstick.

“According to tradition, today’s the day you light a farewell fire to see the spirits off again,” she said. “But Taro’s suddenly become superstitious and told me not to do it.”

With the toe of her shoe she poked at the foot of the posts, where just the other day she had lit the ogara straw in welcome.

“Anyway, he wants to be haunted, like you, apparently. He’s been sleeping in the shed ever since that night. Waiting for her ghost. Just crazy.” She laughed, before gazing up the narrow gravel track with a faraway look in her eyes, as if searching for the ghost.