Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

One day when Yoko met me at a coffee shop, she looked me over with amusement and said, “Fumiko, look at you—you’re a real career woman !” using the English expression that was becoming popular among working women. That morning I had felt a special surge of excitement. As I put on my lipstick before leaving for work, I peered at myself in the bathroom mirror and said gaily, feeling quite youthful, “Look who’s got herself a career!” Yoko must have picked up on the mood I was in.

Sometimes I thought how pleased Uncle Genji would have been about this new life of mine. I remembered my first day off from my job with the Utagawas back in Chitose Funabashi, when I went to Ueno Park and sat weeping alone on a park bench, convinced that I had nothing to look forward to. Had I known then that all this lay ahead of me, I wouldn’t have cried that way—or so I thought. But sometimes on weekend evenings as I leaned against the balcony railing, looking out vaguely at the scenery, I would feel so desolate that I didn’t know what to do. When the wind brought the distant sound of the Odakyu Line to my ears, I even had a fleeting impulse to hurl myself under the wheels of the train. At times like these, rather than try to distract myself, I found the best thing was to go on leaning against the railing, looking up at the slowly darkening sky as car after car went by on the railway line.

TIME MARCHED ON. Two of the Saegusa sisters, Harue and Natsue, were now in their late sixties. They went on dyeing their hair, using bright-red lipstick, and dressing stylishly, but they took to referring to themselves mockingly as the Three Witches. Yoko was now in middle age, and she had her share of the usual problems. As her daughter grew, she became harder to deal with, and Yoko’s mother, with Yuko abroad so much of the time, became more and more dependent. But all of this was nothing compared to the burden of looking after sick members of the older generation.

First, her mother-in-law, Yayoi, developed uterine cancer. Surgery was fortunately successful, but the treatments dragged on until Yayoi’s husband was so worn out and worried that he fell ill himself. Yoko had to look after both of them, often sleeping at their house in Seijo. Around the time they both finally recovered, the Saegusas’ Grampy lost the use of his legs and started to need care of the sort the three sisters couldn’t provide around the clock. Mari and Eri, who lived next door, announced that they’d had enough of nursing him, and so Yoko had to continue commuting to Seijo. The Saegusas hired another housekeeper to help, but unlike the way it was in the old days, there were limits to what they could ask her to do, and I’m sure Yoko was also involved in helping Grampy relieve himself.

What was strange was that none of this left any mark on her. Even as she grew older, her life left no sediment behind. It was as if she had a protective membrane, making her seem to be living in another world, separate from the one at hand. Inside that separate life was a radiance that, wherever she was, made everything around her somehow brighter. Her happiness certainly seemed to bring both Taro and Masayuki under its spell. How the three of them could keep up that three-cornered relationship was beyond me. Looking at them, I used to feel a sense of wonder and disbelief.

DURING SUMMERS IN Karuizawa I constantly saw Yoko and Masayuki together. In contrast, I had few opportunities to see Yoko with Taro. When I first moved to Tokyo, Yoko would telephone once in a while when he was in town and invite me out to dinner with them, but Taro was always so self-conscious and awkward during the meal that I took to excusing myself as often as I could, and so the invitations tapered off. There was nothing more I could do for the two of them, and I had no wish to interfere in their time together. Seeing them individually was of course another matter. I saw Taro as his assistant, and when he was out of the country, Yoko, perhaps feeling sorry for me living alone, would call up. “Fumiko, let’s go out and get something good to eat,” she’d say, so I saw her too. But as time went on, meeting as a threesome became rarer and rarer. Still, there was one evening I recall when the three of us did have dinner together, in Taro’s luxury apartment in Yoyogi Uehara.

Taro had just flown in that afternoon. The day before, I had laid out on his desk all the documents he needed, but one more arrived from the law firm and I decided to stop by his apartment. Since this was several hours after his plane had landed, I slipped the document into his mailbox thinking he and Yoko might already be inside, and turned to leave. At that same moment the two of them stepped out of a taxi and came in at the front entrance.

They were arm in arm.

“It’s our Fumiko!” Yoko said to Taro, stating the obvious, her voice echoing in the high-ceilinged space of the granite entranceway. She withdrew her arm and tugged hard on the sleeve of his coat. I remembered her doing exactly the same thing to her grandmother when she was a little girl, yanking on the sleeve of the old lady’s kimono when she wanted something.

“I know what! Let’s eat together tonight, the three of us. There’s plenty of food here.” She glanced at the shopping bag Taro was carrying in his other hand.

Automatically, I looked at Taro’s face. Just as I thought, he seemed uncomfortable. Before I could open my mouth to say no, Yoko looked up at him and said, “You know, come to think of it, we three never have had dinner together at home. It’s funny, isn’t it? Let’s eat here tonight, just us. It’ll be nice, we can take our time and relax … I left word with Masayuki that I’d be out late anyway. All right?”

Her words were a bit girlish, but she spoke straightforwardly, without any coyness. Taro gave in. His face cleared and he said, “Sure, if Fumiko is willing.”

I hesitated momentarily, but for a woman who lived alone to turn down the offer might have seemed needlessly disobliging. “All right, then,” I said. “I gratefully accept your kind invitation.”

“Goody!” Yoko clapped the tips of her fingers together, just the way she used to do.

I never expected the evening to be so delicious in every way.

“You’re tired, so just sit and rest,” Yoko told Taro, but he joined us in the large kitchen. Though she looked impressively domestic in an apron, all she actually did was transfer a variety of store-bought foods from plastic containers onto serving plates. “Taro’s practically a vegetarian, which is a real bother,” she said, so I thought she would at least boil or stir-fry some fresh vegetables for him, but no; she just reached into the bottom of the shopping bag and kept pulling out side dishes such as spinach with sesame and seasoned kyona leaves, all with the label of Nadaman, an old, exclusive Kyoto restaurant. According to her, at home she cooked almost every night, so when she was out with Taro she never went to the trouble. He didn’t seem to mind. “Today we’re having Japanese food, so let’s go back to ‘life on the floor,’ ” she said, laughing. Instead of using the dinner table, she spread everything out on a low coffee table in the spacious sitting room—all the side dishes, some sushi wrapped in bamboo leaves, and pickles from Kyoto. The plates and chopstick rests she laid out looked quite elegant. Her good taste was obviously inherited, a family thing. The three of us went back and forth between kitchen and sitting room, trading little jokes along the way. Neither the surroundings nor the food was remotely like the old days in Chitose Funabashi, and yet it felt like an extension of those happy times.

Yoko was in especially good spirits. No sooner were we seated than she jumped up—”Oh, I forgot something!”—and brought back a bottle of red wine and a pair of wineglasses. “This is the only bottle left,” she said, “but it should be just enough for you and me, Fumiko.” She handed it to Taro to uncork and pour, then raised her glass to mine in a toast. “Tonight I’m going to see you get blotto for once, Fumiko!” After just one sip, though, the area around her own eyes flushed red. By the time the flush had spread from her throat to her fingertips, she was chattering away even more than usual. Her mood was catching. As the wine took effect I found myself babbling too, and even Taro, who didn’t drink, let down his usual defenses. The content of our conversation was forgettable, but it wasn’t what we were saying so much as the fact that the three of us were together, having a good time, that made us so happy, each in his or her own way. By the end Yoko was doing imitations of the Three Witches, her red face all scrunched, rolling on the floor and laughing till the tears came. Taro and I were rolling about too.