Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

Natsue tittered.

“And the way they dress up is so awful, it lowers the tone of the theater.”

“I know!”

“I tell you, it is so off-putting, lately I would just as soon stay at home and listen to a CD.”

“Yes, much better.”

“That way you’re spared some ghastly sights!”

Shirakawa, who had been following the two sisters’ remarks with an indulgent smile, turned to Yusuke. “At this house and the one next door there was always live music, you see. Quite a luxury.”

Before the war it was chamber music; after the war there had been two top-level pianists among them, from two different generations, and along the way another young woman had taken up singing. That was Yoko, the one who later became Masayuki’s wife. That reminded him: it was over twenty years ago, but one evening Yoko had sung Lucia and it had been wonderful.

“She sang in moonlight, wearing a lovely white dress …,” he reminisced, the eyes behind his glasses staring back into the past. His voice too was nostalgic. “There’s an old saying in these parts that a girl who stands alone in the moonlight too long falls under a spell. I must say, that’s how she sounded when she sang that night.”

As he talked on, caught up in his memories, moment by moment the darkness deepened.

“I am sorry you had that inflicted on you,” Harue said, remembering too. “She should have chosen an easier, more Japanese piece, a ballad like ‘The white citrus flowers are in full blo-o-o-o-m.’ But she picked that instead. Lucia has to be a coloratura.”

“Yes, it is a coloratura role.”

“Well, she managed the easy bits well enough. She was sickly as a child and never had any lung capacity to speak of.”

“But her Lucia was marvelous.”

Natsue got a word in. “I did a bit of singing myself, you know, back when I was in school. I could hit a high A perfectly. I think it must be hereditary.”

Presently a soprano voice of richness and depth floated from the open windows of the parlor, resonating over the darkening greenery. All at once it was as if the entire scene before them was awakened by that voice, infused with unexpected life: the western sky, streaked with bands of pale gold and purple; the two houses, standing gray and disconsolate against that sky; the clusters of trees casting deep black shadows here and there across the ground. The same voice that brought everything suddenly to life also drew them into another, much deeper world—a world that was normally hidden, a world that stretched out into eternity. Yusuke, who had at first looked on with a sense of distance as everyone else sat listening, their faces intent on the music, found himself being gradually drawn in as well, forgetting the moment and the place, lending his ear during that unworldly stretch of time as if entranced. No one spoke. The singing could not have lasted ten minutes, but when it ended he found the darkness all at once grew deeper.

WHEN THEY TROOPED into the dining room, the oval table he remembered from before had been extended to half again its original length and was covered with a lustrous white tablecloth. A pair of lit candlesticks was in the center, one on either side of a small floral arrangement, and in front of each person’s chair were two matching plates of edged chinaware, one on top of the other. Harue seated herself at the head of the table and said, while spreading in her lap a napkin that matched the tablecloth, “Instead of the usual high tea , I had the table set formally for once. Our young ones are all gone this year, and there are so few of us left.” At this, Fumiko began to serve, looking like a consummate maid. Ami, whose role at mealtimes was evidently behind the scenes, did not make an appearance.

The conversation began at first with discussion of the Thai beach resort where the others in the family had all gone; how absurd it was that in this heat anyone should have a wedding in Thailand; how they wouldn’t have wanted to go even if Masayuki hadn’t suddenly died. From there the topic moved on to Masayuki himself. People’s voices grew hushed. The forty-nine days of mourning were not yet over. How young he’d been, how brilliant, what a doting husband. Yes, someone said, but he doted on his wife too much, that was behind the tragedy. Someone else suggested that since both his parents had died of cancer the disease must run in the family. In a voice that signaled imminent tears, Natsue remarked that at least Masayuki never lived to see the Karuizawa property pass into strangers’ hands; in that sense he was lucky, like Yoko.

“This might be the last high tea here, for all we know!” she said, not for the first time, her eyes now actually glistening; then she looked at Yusuke. “Oh yes, this young guest of ours!” she suddenly remembered. She opened her eyes wide, as if to banish tears, and smiled winningly. “We invited him so we could tell him about Peter Jansen.”

“Oh, that’s right. Peter Jansen.” Harue too looked at Yusuke as if just remembering. “Everyone else knows the story.” She looked around the table before turning back to Yusuke and saying proudly, “It’s a very romantic story.”

Fuyue added in a slightly flustered tone, “But one we concocted ourselves, mind you.”

“And what’s wrong with that?” retorted Harue. “Oh, put on the Clarinet Quintet again someone, would you please?”

“Yes,” agreed Natsue. “It’s practically the theme music for it.”

“Fuyue, do put it on.”

“Yes, do! This may be the last time, after all.”

“All right, all right.”

As Fuyue got up, Harue began to relate the succession of misfortunes that had befallen them.

CANDLELIT TABLE

The sisters’ father had lived to the age of ninety-seven before dying in 1990, when the economy was at the peak of what came to be known as the bubble. That was the first misfortune. The second was that the land they possessed in their father’s name was in Seijo and Old Karuizawa, two areas where land prices had lately gone through the roof. They had been forced to sell one home or the other to pay the inheritance tax, and since Seijo was right at the heart of their lives and Karuizawa a summer luxury, they had decided very reluctantly to let go of the latter. Just by coincidence, in that same year of 1990, Yayoi, who had inherited the Shigemitsu property next door, passed away, leaving the Shigemitsus in much the same circumstances. In 1991 the Saegusas and Shigemitsus spent a last summer in Karuizawa for old time’s sake before putting their respective properties on the market.

“It was exactly like something from Chekhov’s The Three Sisters ,” said Harue.

“You mean The Cherry Orchard ,” Fuyue corrected.

“Not The Three Sisters ?”

“No. The Cherry Orchard .”

Natsue cut in. “But then a savior came along.” Her wide eyes blinked.

A mysterious buyer had turned up, working through a Tokyo lawyer. This was a foreign company with its main office in The Hague, in the Netherlands. The deal was that until it decided at some point to use the land for its own purposes, the Shigemitsus and Saegusas could go on living there, as long as they paid the local property tax between them. All communication with the company was to take place through the lawyer. When they heard about it, the sisters decided that the purchaser might actually be the Dutchman Peter Jansen—a young tycoon who used to come to Karuizawa regularly before the war to escape the heat of Indonesia, and had become a friend of both families. That Peter Jansen.