Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

The next evening, after my daughter-in-law had gone home to Miyota, I leaned against the balcony railing and looked out absently at the scenery. The wind was blowing. Sometimes it carried the sound of a train on the Odakyu Line. What a difference from twenty years before, when, after my divorce, I had rented that tiny four-and-a-half-mat walkup in Evergreen Apartments No. 2! There in winter I would sit huddled in the kotatsu trying to get warm, and in summer I would head off to the public bath, dripping with sweat, to freshen up. True, Japan itself had become wealthier, but my good luck was out of proportion to the country’s prosperity. And yet, there was this loneliness. It felt like there were suddenly a gaping hole in my chest. There was nothing more I could ever do for Taro and Yoko—nothing. From that point on, they would be the ones doing things for me. I never dreamed that this turnaround would make me feel so lonely.

FOR TARO, YOKO found a luxury apartment for expatriates in Yoyogi Uehara. It was only available as a rental, which meant he could use it as a tax write-off. As my first job, I handled the paperwork involved. Yoyogi Uehara station was on the Odakyu Line as well, but it also linked up with the subway line that led directly to Nogizaka, where Yoko lived. The neatness of this location showed an astuteness that struck me as uncharacteristic for Yoko, and I rather suspected that Masayuki’s brains had played a part in it.

I SOON ORDERED postcards printed with my new address to announce the move. On the card I mailed to the Saegusas I added a note saying that one of these days I would drop by to say hello. Almost immediately I got a call from Fuyue. “What’s this all about, Fumiko?” she wanted to know. Before I could say anything, Harue came on the line, shoving Natsue out of the way, as it were: “Fumi, you could have knocked us over with a feather! Moving here to Tokyo out of the blue—what on earth is going on?” She seemed unlikely to let me go unless I told her the whole story, so I explained that just as I was starting to feel awkward about living with my stepson’s family after my husband’s death, Taro happened to offer me a job in Tokyo as his assistant, to do various chores for him. She listened quietly, with occasional grunts. I had no idea what she might be thinking. Then abruptly she said, “Well, do come and see us sometime,” and hung up.

A little while later, I visited them in Seijo. The three sisters, by this time in their sixties, gathered noisily in the parlor. Three pairs of eyes lined up, alive with interest. Ever since Taro had bought the Oiwake cottage, they had suspected me of being involved, and now they must have thought they had proof.

“How very convenient that this offer should have come along just after your poor husband died.” The sarcasm in Harue’s voice was ill concealed as she said this, looking me full in the face. “But what kind of ‘chores’ do you actually do?”

“Oh, just a little more than what a maid usually does.”

“That boy Taro mostly isn’t even in Japan, is he?”

His business contacts here were increasing all the time, I replied, so he had plenty to do in this country. She then pressed me for particulars about the nature of his work, but I had only recently arrived in Tokyo and couldn’t give a satisfactory answer. Besides, I wanted to avoid talking about him with these women if I could help it.

Harue kept up her interrogation a while longer but finally gave up, throwing herself back in her armchair with exaggerated force. “Oh dear!” she sighed. “He’s taken Oiwake, he’s taken Fumi … if we aren’t careful, he’ll make off with every last thing we own …” Then she asked me quickly and casually, “So what about this summer?”

Outside, the hydrangeas were at their peak. One month more and it would be time to go to Karuizawa.

She no doubt thought she was being offhand, but her eyes were all too earnest. All of a sudden I saw that Natsue and Fuyue had the same look in their eyes. For perhaps the first time in the thirty years I had known them, I felt a vague pity for the three sisters, and at the same time I was glad that in their self-seeking way, they needed me. I sensed that I was needed not only as a source of labor but as a kind of emotional ballast.

THE NEXT TIME Taro was in Tokyo, he came over just once, to check out my apartment. He planted himself in front of the window, legs spread wide, and looked out over the jumbled cityscape with buildings of every color, shape, and size.

“It’s so ugly,” he said.

“You think so?”

“Ugly and sordid.”

I always appreciated the fact that there were no high-rise buildings around, so I had an unobstructed view of the sky.

“At least the inside is nice,” I said.

He went on, ignoring this. “They say Japan is rich, but it’s just not true.”

He wasn’t asking my opinion, so I said nothing but kept my eyes on his tense profile.

“Materially rich but spiritually poor, everyone says, but whenever I hear that I think, ‘Oh yeah?’ If Japan were really materially rich, that would be one thing, but all its surplus money has done is fill the country to overflowing with ugliness.”

He spun around with a grin. “Then again, surplus money is what keeps me in business.”

I OWED MY own good fortune to that surplus money. My move to Tokyo came in the spring of 1986. Luckily for me, during the next three years Taro continued rounding up investors in Japan, where there was an abundance of money. He ended up coming back to Tokyo far more frequently than he had first anticipated, which meant a corresponding increase in work for me. I started heading into the office of Nakada Associates a couple of days a week. Most of my work involved communicating with clients, so although back in Miyota I had never so much as touched an answering machine, soon every day I was using not just that but a fax machine and copier too. I actually went to a language school and learned to read basic English with the help of a dictionary. Soon I knew my way around a computer too. In no time my bedroom became a bedroom-cum-office, lined with an array of office machines. I’d expected to be given nothing but housemaid’s work, but now I was working really and truly as an assistant. I suppose I had certain abilities that I myself had never suspected in all my fifty years, including that time I worked for a manufacturer of measuring instruments. The more I was given to do, the more I showed the makings of a first-rate office worker. It got so that when anything connected with Taro came up, the people at Nakada Associates would say, “Let’s ask Mrs. Tsuchiya.” Taro was impressed, and wanted to raise my salary. When I declined the offer, he scowled and accused me of being “a tough nut to crack.” But besides my net monthly income, I was also getting paid for my nominal caretaking of the Oiwake cottage, so my actual monthly income was 250,000 yen a month, a princely amount. As for the rent for the apartment, which was set low for me on purpose, my husband’s monthly pension covered it perfectly. No reasonable person would feel entitled to more.

The days passed by in a whirl with plenty of work for me to do, and that was my salvation. Because I was busy, when I did have time to myself I didn’t waste it. I read whenever I could, and attended lectures on literature, history, and economics at Setagaya Citizens College. In the summer I showed up in Karuizawa as usual, but I couldn’t very well let Taro’s affairs slide all summer long, so little by little I put a limit on my time there, going only for the week the three sisters arrived, for example, the week they had guests, or the week they went back to Tokyo. Still, helping in Karuizawa was an important, not-to-be-missed annual event for me. During those intervals, since I stayed in the Oiwake cottage, I also used to visit my eldest son and his family in Miyota and go to Saku to see my mother, who was now a widow and still living with my brother’s family. This gave me a chance to take her out to see Aunt O-Hatsu too, and to be greeted by the old familiar voice saying, “Well, if it isn’t Fumiko.” With Ami, my granddaughter, I retained a close tie though we were no relation by blood, and when she got old enough to ride the train by herself, she would come down to Tokyo for the weekend sometimes and sleep in my tatami guest room. I had my health, I had people I could call family, and I had work that was more than domestic service. I also had money of my own. I even had time to myself. Though my life was nothing out of the ordinary, I had achieved a degree of happiness beyond anything I ever expected.