Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

“A million yen a month,” I joked.

“Done.”

After a pause, I answered. “All right, let’s do this. Fix it so that after taxes, health insurance, and the rest, my take-home pay is a hundred fifty thousand yen a month. I don’t want to live in poverty in Tokyo, after all.”

“A hundred fifty thousand yen?” Irritation was obvious in his voice. “Look here, Fumiko. That would be what people call living in poverty. At Tokyo prices it would barely cover the rent!”

“I have my husband’s monthly pension of a hundred thousand yen. I’ll put that toward the rent.”

“Don’t be dumb!” I could imagine his angry face on the other end of the line. “It’s stupid! Please. There’s no reason to pinch pennies like that when that kind of money means nothing to me.”

“But there wouldn’t be any actual work for me to do.”

“There’s a lawyer here I see only a couple of days a month, and him I pay the equivalent of several hundred thousand yen.”

When I didn’t answer, Taro spoke in the particular, slightly nasal voice he always used when pleading for something. At such times he was deadly serious, but the softness of his voice invariably caught me off guard and distracted me from what he was saying.

“Fumiko, for once in my life I want you to let me do something to make you a bit happier.”

I was quiet. At the other end of the line, Taro too said nothing. The fleeting thought came to me that, at international rates, this mutual silence was a terrible waste of money, but I didn’t know how to answer him. After a pause I said in a voice slightly husky with emotion, “All right, then two hundred thousand yen a month. Any more than that I cannot accept. It’s just not proper to take that kind of money from someone who’s not family—who’s after all only an acquaintance.”

I could picture him gritting his teeth.

“Promise you won’t pay me more than two hundred thousand yen a month.”

“What about inflation?”

“We’ll worry about that when the time comes.”

Before hanging up I got him to agree that I would go on working summers in Karuizawa as always.

At first my family tried to dissuade me, but I gently stressed that this was not the sort of job that involved either daily commuting or hard physical work, and that I wanted another try at life in the city while I was still healthy and not yet even fifty. They were well aware that it would be easier on everybody if I did move out, so they eventually gave in. And since in small towns people talk, I took the trouble to spread the word among relatives and neighbors that, though my son and his wife had actually tried to prevent me from going, I was leaving of my own free will.

Since the Miyota family house and land were too small to divide, I had renounced any rights to them. My late husband’s younger two sons did likewise, as was customary in the countryside. But I left my name on the family register in the town’s public records. When my health declined or there was any change in my working relationship with Taro Azuma, I would of course be back, everyone assumed, and the arrangement would only be for the interim, probably less than ten years. I knew that my husband would have wanted me to see how his children and grandchildren were getting on, and I intended to come back for the Bon festival and New Year’s, to do what I could to maintain family ties.

TARO MUST HAVE told Yoko about the deal, for she telephoned me soon afterward.

“Leave the hunt for a Tokyo apartment to me,” she said, so I reminded her that the rent had to be no more than a hundred thousand yen a month. In no time she came up with a place in Gotokuji, which she picked because it was convenient for the Odakyu and Tokyu Setagaya Lines and would be familiar to me. It was a two-bedroom apartment with a main room that included living and dining areas and a kitchen workspace, over a total area of sixty-two square meters, located on the southeast corner, on the fourth floor of a five-story building a five-minute walk from the station. She sounded like a real estate agent as she rattled off all this information. Moreover, it was not a standard rental apartment but a personal property that the owner was renting out, so it was solidly built, and a hundred thousand per month was a real bargain. Because it was undergoing renovation, it would not be available for another couple of months. Still, it was an unbeatable deal. Her enthusiasm left me little choice. I had no sense of the Tokyo market anymore and no idea if the rent was high or low, but I decided to take it. “Now let me pick out the furniture,” Yoko said in that same bossy tone. She was a professional interior designer, after all. “Not too expensive, now,” I warned her. Which did I prefer, sleeping in a bed or on the floor, she wanted to know, as one of the bedrooms had a tatami floor. I immediately said I would prefer a bed. She laughed. “What a modern girl you are, Fumiko.”

“I’ve slept on futons all my life,” I commented. “Time for a change.”

The only items of furniture I took with me were the ones that old Mrs. Utagawa had given me, less because I needed them than because I couldn’t bear to part with them. Beyond that, all I really needed were my clothes and some personal things, so I only packed a few cardboard boxes and sent them ahead. My daughter-in-law offered to leave the children with their father and help me move in. She shouldn’t have bothered when I had so few belongings, I thought, but rejecting her offer would have been rude, so one weekend we went up to Tokyo together. Yoko was there in the apartment wearing an apron, all ready to help, having likewise left her daughter in her husband’s hands.

The apartment was astonishing. The only way I can describe it is to say—however silly it sounds—that it looked like something straight out of the glossy photographs in a magazine spread. Everything was brand-new—not just the walls and floors but the fitted kitchen and bathroom, all white and modern and stylish. As for the living-dining-kitchen area, which was easily larger than ten mats in size, one entire wall was taken up by built-in cabinets. Though I was hardly qualified to judge, the materials and workmanship seemed to be of a high quality. Standing in the middle of the room, my daughter-in-law declared it was “just like New York.” I was none too sure about that, but it still made me gasp in amazement. Unable to believe my eyes, I went around opening and closing the cabinets over and over again.

An explanation came later when I saw Yoko off at the station, leaving behind my daughter-in-law, who was going to stay the night. “Let’s talk about it another time,” Yoko said. “After you’re settled in.” She kept trying to change the subject, but I squared my jaw and kept pressing for an answer. Finally I got her to reveal that the apartment had actually been bought by Taro’s company and completely renovated at considerable expense. A place like that would normally cost at least two hundred thousand yen a month, since there were maintenance fees as well, but because this was company-owned housing, all I needed to pay was a hundred thousand yen each month to Nakada Associates—utilities included. I also learned that Taro had deliberately chosen a smallish place, thinking that otherwise I might back out of it.

I wasn’t sure whether it made me happy or sad to have him do so much for me. I had pressed Yoko relentlessly until she told me everything, but once she did, I had no more to say. I walked unseeing along the busy thoroughfare near the station, until we were at the crossing.

“Fumiko, you’re like a big sister to him.” Yoko stood beside me and turned to look me in the eye. In time with the jingle of the warning bell, the light of a red crossing signal blinking on and off was reflected on her face. As the train roared past us, she shouted, “I know he’s always wanted to look after you. But you were married, so he held back, out of consideration for your husband. You’ve got to let him do at least this much for you.”