Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

After we were done with the barbecue—typically a little hectic, what with sitting one minute and standing the next—we cleaned up, and, feeling relieved that an important ritual had been duly performed, started to stroll down toward the beach in a group.

Though America is a vast territory, its shoreline is no more extensive than Japan’s, a country of islands. The most valuable stretches, which often have their own private roads to the beach, are the property of the very rich. This is especially true of the North Shore of Long Island, known as the Gold Coast, where families celebrated in the pages of American history—the Vanderbilts, Morgans, Whitneys—once had estates running to hundreds of acres. Perhaps it was only natural that F. Scott Fitzgerald should have set his novel The Great Gatsby on this shore. These millionaires built palatial residences in a variety of styles—Tudor, Georgian, Gothic; some even shipped entire castles from Europe, stone by stone. With staff and the staff’s families living full-time on the property, they could invite guests from Manhattan any summer weekend to party grandly in the gardens, their gaiety spilling out onto the beach.

Over time, as railroads and bridges were built, easy accessibility proved a mixed blessing when it resulted in rampant real estate development. The huge houses, a thousand of which had once existed, were demolished one after another, and typical middle-class suburban housing sprang up with astonishing speed in their place. Still, even today, much of the precious oceanfront land remains in the hands of the wealthy, if generally in more modest parcels. Making use of public parks and beaches on weekends was the only way ordinary residents had access to the ocean. Our family lived fairly close to the shore, yet we too had to go to this public area to enjoy an ocean view—a dock, seagulls, white sails, and the shimmering horizon.

I stepped away from the group and headed out toward the dock.

I was still at an age when I believed my real life lay in the future. I felt quite happy surrounded by Japanese people speaking Japanese, but I had no wish to blend in with the group. These people were all adults, whose lives were fixed and who seemed content to stay within the borders described by “retail,” “customer service,” and “head office.” For me, the future stretched out ahead, filled with the unknown. While I basked in the comfort this limited community provided, I also needed to be by myself from time to time.

AS I APPROACHED the dock, I saw that Taro Azuma had arrived before me; he was leaning on the railing, gazing out at the water. I hesitated. He was the person there closest to my age, yet the one with whom I felt least comfortable. I ought to have been able to talk to him in the most casual, easy way, but instead I felt constrained. The memory of that moment in my room when I thought we’d shared an invisible world now seemed distant.

Something—maybe the cry of a seagull—made him look up and notice me. I acknowledged his presence with a slight bow and walked toward him, awkwardly conscious of wearing shorts rather than a skirt. My years in the States obviously hadn’t fully freed me from my Japanese prudishness: I stopped some distance from where he stood, and leaned on the railing myself.

It was he who spoke first: “I thought we were going to see the Atlantic today.” He had to raise his voice to cover the distance between us.

“Isn’t this the Atlantic?” I shouted back, surprised.

“No, this is the Long Island Sound. It’s like a big bay. That’s Connecticut over there on the other side. You have to go to the South Shore to see the Atlantic.”

All this time, I’d assumed that the water out there was part of the open sea and that England was somewhere on the other side. That’s how clueless I was.

“It’s hard to escape America, isn’t it?” I cried out.

He smiled faintly, showing his white teeth. We stood there, apart and yet together, bathed in sunlight and watching the horizon; it was as if an enormous crystal fan had been laid on the surface of the water, which scintillated in the afternoon sun. Seagulls wailed as they flew above us, and white sails glided in the distance. A picture-perfect scene. So it was America that spread out beyond the horizon.

“If this were the Pacific, we’d know at least that Japan was over there on the other side,” I said, raising my voice again.

He did not respond immediately, but after a while, still looking far out to sea, he asked in a loud voice, “Do you want to go back to Japan?”

“Yes, I do.” I thought it ridiculous that we should go on shouting, so I moved a few steps closer. Since he kept his eyes on the horizon, I felt the need to repeat my longing for my own country. “Of course I want to go back.”

He still looked ahead.

However desperate he’d been to come here—however miserable his life had been back in Japan—wouldn’t it be natural to have at least some nostalgia for the place?

“Don’t you?” I ventured. Then I remembered my father talking about Azuma’s losing his parents when he was little and being raised by an uncle.

He simply said, without turning his head, “Why would I go back? There’s nothing for me there.”

Now his voice was so low I had to strain to hear him. It made me feel I had offended him. Maybe I ought to have regretted asking such a question, but all I felt was a fresh awareness of the deep gap that divided us. I had no idea what Azuma’s past had been like, but no matter what I said, I was bound to feel I offended him.

While I remained silent, he added, as if to soften the tone of what he’d said, “There’s really nothing for me there, so, no, I don’t want to go back.” He then turned toward me for the first time, a surprising mildness in his expression.

He turned back to the water; we stood there for a while longer, saying nothing. It was a day without wind, and the scene before us was peace itself, with only a few wisps of clouds a long way off.

“I hear you came over on a ship?” I asked, after some time.

“Yes, a freighter.”

Was it pride that made him say it was a freighter?

“I’ve only been on short boat trips. What’s a long voyage like?”

“A long voyage,” he repeated, as if the phrase sounded odd to him. “I’m sure an airplane is more comfortable, but …”

“But what?”

“The ship went so much faster than I thought it would. When I was standing at the bow looking out, I felt almost dizzy. That was true on really foggy nights too, when you couldn’t see anything even with the lights on. It just kept moving at full speed.”

He paused before going on.

“Even when it rained hard it just kept moving fast.”

I was amazed to hear him talking so much.

Azuma was quiet for a while before speaking again.

“It was almost scary.”

His voice was even lower than before—as if it were echoing from the far end of a night enveloped in dense sea mist. It was a dialogue with his own memory, not me.

“It seemed like a miracle that we didn’t crash into something and sink. And I said to myself that if the ship arrived safely, it’d be a sign that I should go on living.” He stopped, now aware it seemed of his surroundings. “Of course, modern ships don’t sink that easily, but at the time that’s how I felt.”

He was gazing into my eyes. It suddenly dawned on me that this person didn’t count himself among the adults either; that he found it less of a trial to talk to someone like me. Away from Japan, he also was deprived of a chance to meet people his own age from his own country. I was stunned at this realization—that, despite all that separated us, this man had somehow placed me on the same plane as himself. But he can’t have known what was going through my mind.