Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

Just then we heard the faint sound of the telephone ringing in the cottage. It was uncanny; we had arrived only minutes before. It was as if someone were watching us from a distance. Masayuki was pulled back into the moment; he frowned and cocked his head uneasily toward the sound. I raced back to the cottage, kicking up fallen leaves as I ran, and picked up the receiver to hear a familiar voice.

“Fumiko, is that you?”

It was Taro. He must have expected we would go there and at some point had started calling every five minutes.

“Yes, it’s me.” Careful to keep my irritation under control in front of Masayuki, I said, “Did you hear from Yoko?”

Impatiently he asked, “She’s not there?”

“No, she’s not.”

On the heels of this, he said, “I think she might be in Karuizawa.”

I said nothing. We intended to have a look there too, but as both of the earlier adventures had taken place in Oiwake, the likelihood of finding her anywhere else seemed slim.

“What about it?” Taro asked. “Did you try there?”

“Not yet, but we will.”

“I have a hunch that’s where you’ll find her,” he said gravely. “It occurred to me when I hung up before.”

Why didn’t he tell me a little more of what was in his mind? Why didn’t he explain that by “Karuizawa” he meant the Saegusa house, not the other one? When I heard the word “Karuizawa,” I had the fleeting thought that, given the freezing temperature, there really was some possibility that she might have gone there. Several years back, the Saegusa sisters had complained about the trials of getting old, the cold settling in their bones even before the end of summer, and had had kerosene heaters installed in each of their bedrooms. The Shigemitsu household did the same. Yoko’s bedroom there was fully heated.

“Anyway,” I said, “we’ll go look. If we find her I’ll call you, but if we don’t, I won’t.” Aware of Masayuki’s eyes on me from behind, I hung up without waiting for an answer.

“Go where, Karuizawa?”

“Yes.”

He asked no more questions.

We stood there wordlessly in the deserted cottage for another moment, as if making sure that it was perfectly still. The chill that had settled in the small, old building as fall turned to winter seeped up through the floorboards, enveloping me. Amid the quiet and the cold, I got the distinct impression that Masayuki did not have much hope of finding her in Karuizawa. The flicker of hope that Taro’s intensity had aroused in me quickly faded.

Outside, the dark gray winter sky hung lower and lower.

The two Western-style buildings stood together in lonely disuse, the very picture of winter, or of dying itself. Masayuki got out of the car with an absent look and plodded mechanically toward the Shigemitsu house to one side. I started off in the same direction but then decided there was little point in both of us searching the same building. “I’ll look over here then,” I called out to his back, and turned toward the Saegusa house.

I wanted Taro to be happy. Yet the thought that now at last he would be happy may have unnerved me. And my fear of his happiness may have convinced me that what I dreaded could only be true—that Yoko had in fact flown off to New York.

There’s no point in trying to defend myself, but from the moment I set foot in the Saegusa house, my mind was made up that she was not there. It was nearly ten years since I had last seen her in the attic rooms. In the meantime, the attic had been turned into storage space, long unused as bedrooms. Besides, I was in my mid-fifties and my legs were not what they had been. After taking a quick look around the rambling house, beginning with the first floor, I finally started up the attic stairs but stopped halfway, checking only that all three doors along the corridor were shut before retracing my steps. If that was all, I wouldn’t have blamed myself so much afterward. The moment I turned to leave, however, I felt something strange—at least, it seemed to me that I did. Perhaps it’s a memory colored by what came later, yet the three closed doors seemed to be trying to tell me something. Or rather, in a way I still can’t explain, I felt as if I heard the voice of a little girl, talking excitedly to herself. My surroundings were hushed, but for a moment I was hearing things. I remember that when I went down the stairs, I moved cautiously, not making a sound, trying to shake off the illusion. I remember that on the silent ride home with Masayuki, I fought off the urge to go back and check one more time.

THAT NIGHT, WHEN I got back to my apartment in Gotokuji, the red light on my answering machine was flashing. The first message was a request from Taro to call him as soon as I got home without worrying about the time difference. After that there were a dozen calls without any message.

I washed my face and hands thoroughly, changed my clothes, and took my time making a cup of hot green tea before I telephoned Taro.

“She’s not there yet?” I asked.

“No,” he answered shortly before asking, “Did you go on over to Karuizawa?”

“Of course we did.”

“I called and called.”

“Yes, I know.”

“No, I mean I called Karuizawa.”

“The Saegusa house?”

“Yes, over and over for about two hours.”

Probably at five-minute intervals, as before, I thought. “They usually unplug the telephone before leaving, in case of lightning.”

Taro paused before asking the question he already knew the answer to. “She wasn’t there?”

“No, she wasn’t.”

“You looked in every room?”

I hesitated slightly before saying quietly, “I did.”

He didn’t press me anymore.

That night there was a light snowfall, and by the time I was about to turn out the lights I could see snow piled on the balcony railing.

In the morning, the snow had stopped and there was only a gray, overcast sky. The snow on the railing had gone. But when I switched on the television, the news reported heavy snow in Nagano that had started at dawn and was disrupting train schedules. I was standing in the kitchen making coffee, thinking about the snow, when the phone rang.

It was Masayuki.

“No word from New York yet?”

“No, not yet.”

“I checked by telephone to see if her name was on the passenger list of any nonstop flight, but it’s not on any flight that’s landed so far.”

“I see.”

“I suppose she could have spent the night in Narita, or made a stopover somewhere …”

“True.”

Not knowing what else to say, I was silent, and so was he. After the uncomfortable silence stretched on, I finally broke it.

“I’ll call you as soon as I hear something.”

“Yes, please do.”

No sooner had I hung up and gone back to the kitchen than the phone rang again. I put down the kettle, rushed back to the living room, and picked up the receiver. This time it was Taro.

“I see they’ve had a snowstorm.”

He must have been watching the NHK broadcast in New York. He seemed to be implying that Yoko was in Karuizawa. My own irritation and anxiety made me not reply.

“No word yet?”

“As soon as I hear anything, I’ll call you.” I think I said this fairly snappishly. Two grown men calling me in turns—what in heaven’s name did they expect me to do?

Taro asked hesitantly, “Are you sure you checked every room in Karuizawa?”

He must have sensed something from my response the evening before.

Why did I have to run around searching for Yoko? Indignation welled up in me, and at the same time I was furious that my failure to check out the attic should come back to haunt me this way. I yelled into the telephone, “If you’re that worried, why don’t you just go look for her yourself!”