Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

AFTER TARO’S RETURN for the first time in fifteen years, the long winter stretched on. It was April by the time the snow melted, the black ground thawed out, and spring arrived. Soon even the snow on top of Mount Asama sparkled and began to run down in rivulets. From that late Nagano springtime into the summer, I took time to ensure that the Oiwake cottage was brought from the brink of ruin to something like its original condition. I knew from the start what might lie ahead. I felt alarmed, and wished I could make time stand still. All the same, it was not without a certain satisfaction that, as tree buds swelled and the woods turned lush all around, I watched the little house, whose life had all but ended, begin to revive again.

“How I’m going to use the place I don’t exactly know, but would you at least see to it that it’s livable?” That was Taro’s request. Once I inspected it with this in mind, I realized that any house neglected for so long naturally needs more than a thorough cleaning, and indeed problem after problem with the roof, doors, windows, and plumbing turned out to require the attentions of skilled workmen. My husband and I could have paid the cost of labor in advance and asked for reimbursement, but since I didn’t want to get ahead of myself, I copied out Taro’s address on an envelope, struggling with the unfamiliar alphabet, and sent him a note asking for instructions. I almost immediately received a phone call from a capable-sounding Japanese woman who lost no time in transferring the large sum of five million yen to my account at Ueda Credit Bank. That was when I first learned that Nakada Associates in Tokyo’s Akasaka district was the law firm representing Taro in Japan. I opened an account in his name so that I could pay for the cost of restoration work out of it. I also arranged for telephone and other utility bills, including propane, to be paid from there. My family hadn’t heard anything about Taro after I had lunch with him at the Prince Hotel back in January, so I told them he was a distant relation of the family I used to work for in Tokyo, someone who had made his fortune in America, and left it at that. Since I already worked summers at a villa in Karuizawa, no one thought anything of it if this Taro Azuma person asked me to be the caretaker of his place in Oiwake. I complied with his wish to leave the cottage looking as close as possible to the way it used to be, and all I personally did inside was dust and scrub. Of the futon covers that still seemed salvageable, I had the original materials washed before stuffing them with fresh cotton. When old Mrs. Utagawa’s tea chest turned up in a closet, I checked the contents, saw there was nothing particularly worthwhile inside, and left it all there. The house key that I sent Taro by airmail was an old one—purposely so.

THAT SUMMER, SOON after I went to work in Karuizawa, Natsue asked me out of the blue one day, “Whatever happened to that Oiwake property?”

I felt a pang of guilt and tried to cover it up. “The cottage is still there …,” I said.

She smiled ingenuously, her dimple showing. “My, after all that rush to buy, they certainly are taking their time about rebuilding!”

I thanked heaven that she didn’t have a mind inquiring enough to suggest that we go over and have a look. Whether Taro would ever actually use the place, I was still not entirely certain, and there was no point in my upsetting her with information she had no need to know.

Taro’s next visit came a few days after Natsue brought up the subject of Oiwake. The telephone rang while my daughter-in-law and I were clearing the supper dishes. She answered it and handed me the receiver, murmuring “Mr. Azuma” in a voice that showed she now knew who he was. He was calling from the Hotel New Otani in Tokyo and would arrive in Oiwake the following afternoon to stay a week. I had already explained that I worked for the Saegusas in the summer so my time was limited, but before hanging up I agreed to see him at the cottage on my way home the following evening. In the morning I took advantage of the fine weather to go to Oiwake and lay out Takero’s reconditioned striped futon in the front tatami room, where the sun would reach it and fluff it up, before going on to Karuizawa. A slight alteration of my customary route was all it took. I did my morning work as usual, but by afternoon, around the time when Taro had said he would be arriving, I found myself getting nervous. Perhaps he was already in Karuizawa and was driving around and around this block. I kept leaving off whatever I was doing to crane my neck, trying to see beyond the hedge. Surely he knew that Yoko was married to Masayuki. My eyes also strayed toward the Shigemitsu garden, where Yoko was puttering about with a trowel.

I had intended to slip off early, but on that day of all days, just as I was leaving I was asked to do one thing and another, so that by the time I arrived in Oiwake it was past six. What looked like a rental car was parked inside the gate, and the yellow porch light was on as if waiting for me. The sound of my car brought Taro out onto the porch, and when he saw it was me his face lit up with pleasure. He said he would make us a pot of tea. My son got home at all hours from the bank where he worked. But my husband, who had retired from the town hall and was now helping in our daughter-in-law’s family pickle business, was always home by six, waiting for me to get back and join the rest of the family for supper. I really had no time, but stayed with Taro just to keep him company. I was braced for the inevitable question, but he didn’t say a word about Yoko. You might almost have thought he had traveled all the way from America just to escape the heat in this small, run-down cottage in the mountains.

The next day I was able to leave Karuizawa early and stopped in on my way home, half expecting him to be out, but the car was still parked there and the porch light was switched on. Once again he stepped out to greet me, showing no sign of restlessness. When I sat down at the table with a cup of hot green tea in front of me, he told me matter-of-factly that after years of living overseas, sitting and sleeping on the tatami floor had become a bit much for him and so he’d decided to use Takero’s old study, which had a built-in wooden bed in one corner. He had laid out the futon there the night before, he said. I got up to have a look, curious to see how he had set things up. Sure enough, there on top of the wooden frame was Takero’s striped futon, and on the desk opposite were some papers in English, with shirts from the cleaner’s stacked in their clear plastic wrapping on the bookshelf overhead. For a second I felt as if Yoko’s father was there in the cottage, before realizing afresh that Taro had finally come back.

I was anxious to settle money matters first, so as soon as I was back at the table I showed him a notebook where I’d kept a neat record of how the five million yen from Nakada Associates had been used to open an account in his name, with withdrawals in such-and-such amounts. He gave the figures only a brief glance before talking about something else. On a daytime walk, he said, he had found that within a two-kilometer radius, twenty-one new cottages had been built in fifteen years, which worked out to an average of 1.4 per year; at that rate the area would soon be more crowded than an American suburb, although plenty of the houses were empty. Again, he didn’t once mention Yoko’s name.

When I stopped by the next day, he was out on the porch repainting the rattan furniture white. He seemed so plainly to be killing time that I couldn’t help asking, “What do you do for dinner?”

“Go out to eat.”

Yes, but when was he going to get in touch with Yoko? I was on tenterhooks. As if to put me off, he again brought up an unrelated topic. Lunch he fixed himself, but the compressor in that old refrigerator wasn’t working. Nothing got cold.